Mohanty skips meet & arrest too

Mohanty skips meet & arrest too

Statesman News Service
BERHAMPUR, Sept. 14: Dandapani Mohanty, the convener of the now outlawed, Daman Pratirodh Manch, preferred to stay away from the anti-Salwa Judum seminar organised here today to avoid arrest.
He had stayed away from a similar seminar held in Bhubaneswar yesterday. Speaking on phone, he alleged that the state government was suppressing his fundamental rights by not allowing him to attend a seminar. Mr Mohanty said the state government had banned the Daman Pratirodh Manch, not any person. “Moreover, the case filed by me against the ban of the Daman Pratirodh Manch is pending in the Orissa High Court.
According to him, the state government has no right to threaten him that he would be arrested just because he had attended a seminar which the authorities have termed as pro-Naxalite. Mr Mohanty also alleged that his house was under watch of the police today.
Today, a meeting was organised against Salwa Judum, an initiative by the Chhattisgarh government to counter Maoists, at the Utkal Ashram auditorium in the city. The vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberation (PUCL), Mr Binayak Sen and the president of the Bharatiya Jan Andolan, Mr BD Sharma, attended the seminar along with a cultural troupe from Chhattisgarh.
As a security measure, seven platoons of armed policemen have been deployed in the city to check any possibility of hard core Maoists entering the city. Armed policemen were deployed in large number at all squares leading to the venue.