New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the transfer of Chhattisgarh human rights activist and school teacher Soni Sori from the Raipur Central Jail to Jagdalpur Jail. Sori had complained of sexual harassment from jail officials at the Raipur prison.
Sori, in police custody since October 2011, was arrested on charges of being a courier between Maoists and the Essar group. In custody, Sori was not only allegedly raped at the Dantewada police station, but tortured too with stones inserted into her private parts.
Her health since the assault has been deteriorating and activists fear she may lose her life before her plea for bail is addressed by the courts. In her many letters, Soni has been complaining of bad health and being denied sustenance. "Giving electric shocks, stripping me naked, shoving stones inside me - is this going to solve the Naxal problem," she once asked in a letter to the Supreme Court.
Activists insist Sori was jailed for questioning human rights violations by police and security forces in the state. "Chhattisgarh has an unwritten set of rules about how an adivasi should behave. You don't organise, you don't agitate, you don't protest against human rights violations, you don't protest against the state, and you certainly don't protest against industrial houses that are in Bastar to usher in the industrial revolution," Himanshu Kumar, member of the Chhattisgarh chapter of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said.
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