Two activists working with Adivasi and Dalit communities in southern Odisha were arrested in Bhawanipatna town in Kalahandi district on Friday in connection with a case linked to an April clash between police and residents in the Rayagada district.
Randall Sequeira and Laxman Naik were taken from Sequeira’s home in Hill Town at around 10.45 pm, activists and the Right to Food Campaign said.
The police allegedly seized their mobile phones and took them to the Town Police Station without explaining the grounds for their arrest or producing a warrant.
The two were reportedly kept in custody overnight without access to their lawyers or families. They were taken to Rayagada the following day and produced before a sub-divisional judicial magistrate at around 6.30 pm, after which they were sent to the Rayagada Sub Jail, Countercurrents reported.
Neither Sequeira nor Naik is named in the first information report related to the April incident, the activists have alleged.
April clashes
The case relates to a clash in Kantamal on the night of April 6 and April 7, when police entered a village in Rayagada, amid protests against a road project linked to Vedanta Limited’s proposed Sijimali bauxite mine.
The residents were opposing the construction of a roughly 3-km road from Purlong to Sagabari Ghat, which would provide access to the mine...