Sunday, April 10, 2005

'India bars rights team from meeting Maoist prisoners':

2 Hour,47 minutes Ago

[World News] Kathmandu,

A European rights group has said its team was barred from meeting two senior Maoist leaders from Nepal being held in Indian prisons.

The team travelled through India in March to participate in a conference organised by the World People's Resistance Movement (Europe and South Asia), a London-based organisation.
The delegation wanted to meet Nepalese Maoist leader C. Prakash Gajurel aka Gaurav, jailed in Chennai after he was arrested with a fake passport, and Mohan Baidhya alias Kiran, arrested in West Bengal where he had undergone a cataract operation.

The team also tried to visit Beur prison in Bihar where 19 more Nepalese Maoists are reportedly being held.

The delegation, which returned to Europe last week, issued a statement saying that though an earlier delegation was allowed to meet Gajurel in prison in March 2004, India subsequent visits by international visitors.

It said though the Indian government had charged the two Maoist leaders with "sedition" and "incitement to wage war against the Indian state, it was yet to produce any "concrete evidence" of such acts. According to the team, the 19 other Maoists in Beur jail were being detained "solely for their political views and their admitted membership in or support for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)".

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