Even as the verdict of the Gridiha sessions court, sentencing Marandi and three of his associates to death in July this year, is all set to come up for a review in the Ranchi high court on Wednesday, a group of intellectuals, writers, poets and artists have come together in Hyderabad to organise a people's campaign in support of Marandi.
The committee fighting against the death sentence to Marandi, comprising activists from several organisations, met on Tuesday and decided to organise a big rally in Hyderabad to mobilise support for Marandi.
Revolutionary poet Varavara Rao told a press conference in Hyderabad that the rally of writers, poets, journalists, theatre personalities and other artists will be organised on December 1 coinciding with the hanging of another revolutionary activists Kishtaiah Goud of Srikakulam on the same day in 1975.
"We will organise a very strong movement not only in India but at global level because it is first time in India that a tribal activist has been sentenced to death. We want to fight politically because it was a politically motivated case in which he was framed," he said.
Tuesday's meeting was attended by Gitanjali of Revolutionary Writers Organisation, Dr Roshni of Democratic Women's Writers Association, Dappu Ramesh of Praja Kala Mandali and K Pratap Rao of Indian People's Theatre Association and Koti, secretary, Praja Kala Mandali.
Varavara Rao pointed out that the tribal activist Jiten Marandi was different from the Maoist Jiten Marandi who was underground and allegedly involved in the attack at Chilkari on October 26, 2007.
Twenty people including for Jharkhand chief minister Babu Lal Marandi's son Anup were killed in the attack. Jiten Marandi was arrested a year after the attack and the court sentenced him on the basis of the evidence furnished by the by the Jharkhand police.
Gitanjali, a member of Revolutionary Writers Organisations, said that the mining mafia was behind getting Marndi and his friends arrested and getting them convicted in the case because he was fighting against the displacement of tribals for the benefit of the mining companies.
When asked whether he did not have hope of getting justice from the Ranchi high court, Varavara Rao said that it was in Jharkhand that both the lower court and high court had awarded life imprisonment to a person like Dr Binayak Sen. "He could be released only after the Supreme Court's order", he said.
He said that case of Marandi was reminiscent of the case of Nigerian activist of Ogoni tribe, who was executed in 1995 as he fought against the destruction of the environment and for the livelihood of his tribe by the indiscriminate extraction of petroleum and dumping of hazardous waste by the British companies.
