On October 28, seven farmers were handcuffed by Andhra Pradesh Police while protesting in Amaravati against the government’s move to shift the state capital to Visakhapatnam.

The incident has drawn national attention as five of those arrested are Dalits and two belong to Other Backward Classes. Not only has the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) taken cognisance of the matter, the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has lambasted the Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy government for meting out inhumane treatment to farmers.

Given the criticism unleashed against the state government, six constables, who were involved in the incident when escorting arrested farmers from Narasaraopet sub-jail to the central prison in Guntur, have been placed under suspension.

Andhra Pradesh home minister Mekathoti Sucharita too expressed regrets. But these moves come across as too little, too late.

The SC and OBC farmers were arrested and sent to judicial custody on Monday. On Tuesday, they were subjected to COVID-19 tests before being shifted to the prison in Guntur. The police arrested them on charges of “obstructing a section of Dalits from entering their villages.”

The arrested farmers were a part of a gathering of protesters who had assembled in Amaravati from different parts of the state to protest the YSRCP government’s capital shifting decision. That the police did not even apply their mind in handling the protesters is evident from the fact that they have foisted a case under SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against five Dalits, who were among those subjected to handcuffing.

The Supreme Court in 1995 held that minimal freedom of movement cannot be cut down by the application of handcuffs or other hoops. It had categorically stated that the handcuffing of prisoners without judicial consent was illegal.

In the landmark Supreme Court case of Prem Shankar Shukla v. Delhi Administration (1980), the court held that indiscriminate use of handcuffs by the police is a violation of the right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Indian constitution.

According to the court, handcuffing is legal only if the arrestee is: (a) involved in serious non-bailable offences (b) previously convicted of a crime, of desperate character, likely to commit suicide, or likely to attempt to escape. The use of handcuffs and the reasons for their use must be recorded.
But it is explicitly clear that the current case involving farmers does not attract either of the provisions mentioned in the police manual. So, it is clear that the police have brazenly overstepped the rule of law just to please their political bosses, says V.S. Krishna, convener of the Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Forum.

Telugu Desam Party politburo member Varla Ramaiah moved NHRC, seeking to rein in the police machinery, which he has accused of unleashing a reign of terror against opposition parties at the behest of the ruling party.

The YSR Congress government, headed by Jaganmohan Reddy, after all, has set an anti-Amaravati mood in its symbolic war against his predecessor N. Chandrababu Naidu, and the police are doing more than what they are asked to so as to be in the good books of the helmsmen of the government, G. Gangadhar, a whistle-blower doctor heading the OBC cell of the AP Congress Committee, has told The Wire.

Gangadhar has also moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) after he was implicated in a case by the CID sleuths for his comment in a TV debate, on the fact that the government will lose the battle against COVID-19 if it loses the frontline warriors like the doctors.

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