Rahul Easwar, activist and president of the Ayyappa Dharma Sena, was arrested again on Sunday, 28 October, due to his actions and statements around the controversial issue of women’s entry to the Sabarimala temple.
Easwar had declared that, if any women between the ages of 10 and 50 entered the temple, then there would be about 20 people waiting to cut off their own hands and spill blood in Sabarimala, thereby forcing it to close due to desecration.
Rahul Easwar was arrested by Kochi police on Sunday morning from his apartment in Thiruvananthapuram. He posted from his Twitter account at 10.16 am on Sunday saying that he was being arrested, and later, at 10.36 am, that police were not allowing him to eat breakfast, and that despite telling him that they were taking him to a hospital, they had taken him to the Central Police Station in Kochi next to Kochi High Court.
In the tweet, he asked if these actions by the police – that is, not allowing him to eat breakfast and taking him to the police station when they told him they'd take him to the hospital, were human rights violations.
A case was filed against Rahul Easwar by a Thiruvananthapuram native, and a non-bailable FIR was registered by Kochi police on Friday after he made the controversial remarks at a press meet in Kochi. He had been booked under Section 117 (abetting commission of offence by the public or by more than ten persons) and Section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) of the IPC and 118(E) of the Kerala Police Act.
He was previously arrested on 17 October from Sabarimala hill for obstructing police from carrying out their duties and unlawful assembly, through the course of his involvement in protests there. His wife, Deepa Rahul Easwar, at the time claimed he had been arrested in secret, and carried away from Sabarimala hill in a tractor under a tarpaulin sheet.
On 22 October, Rahul Easwar was granted bail by a local court in Ranni in Pathanamthitta. His lawyer filed an emergency bail application with the local court after bail was rejected on 20 October by the Pathanamthitta first class magistrate.
(This article was first published in The News Minute, and has been republished here with permission.)
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