Dantewada police raid rights activists home in Jaipur for woman Naxalite

Dantewada police raided the home of PUCL member Kavita Srivastava in Jaipur.

Listen to this article

00:00

1x 1.5x 1.8x

Searching for a woman Naxalite who was allegedly present when an Essar contractor was arrested while handing over money to Maoists,the Dantewada police early this morning raided the home of PUCL member Kavita Srivastava in Jaipur.

After we got information that Soni Sodi was hiding in Delhi,we sent a team. There we came to know she had moved to Jaipur so the police raided the home of Srivastava, Dantewada SP Ankit Garg told The Indian Express.

Srivastava,general secretary of the Rajasthan chapter of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties,said she was being targeted for exposing misdeeds of the Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh governments. Activists Aruna Roy,Binayak Sen and Jean Dreze condemned the police action,calling it a bid to muzzle voices of dissent.

Story continues below this ad

We had specific information about Sodi. It was proper police action. We took help of the local police… got warrants from local magistrate, Garg said.

A resident of Dantewadas Sameli village,Sodi was earlier superintendent at a government school in Jabeli. Her husband Anil Putane is in jail for Naxal links.

I was out when the raid occurred at around 6.30 am. Several fully armed policemen from Jaipur and a team of the Chhattisgarh police claimed I was sheltering a suspected Naxal, said Srivastava.