New Delhi, India — A judge ordered the release on bail of a civil rights activist charged with sedition for publishing a report alleging torture of Sikhs by security forces in the troubled state of Punjab.
Judge T.S. Oberoi ordered the release of N. D. Pancholi, one of five authors of the 170page report, and on Prakash Gupta, the printer, a police spokesman said Friday.
Police arrested the men Wednesday and confiscated 2,000 copies of the report, entitled “Report to the Nation — Oppression in Punjab,” from a binder’s shop.
Pancholi and Gupta were charged with sedition and provoking communal tension, the police spokesman said. He said the men face a three-year jail sentence if convicted.
The document was written by five members of a leading civil rights group, Citizens for Democracy, who spent two weeks in the Sikh dominated northern state in May 1985, said V.M. Tarkunde, president of the group.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 20, 1985
