Bangalore: Justice Santosh Hegde, Lokpal bill drafting committee member, Sunday termed the police action against Baba Ramdev and his supporters here as violation of "fundamental rights of citizens" and said it "brought back memories" of the Emergency.
"Everyone who was peacefully sleeping there was beaten
up and thrown out…Quite an amount of brutality could be seen
there. I am very very sad and it brings back the memories of
June 25-26, 1975," the Karnataka Lokayukta said.
"This is violation of the fundamental rights of
citizens and also a violation of the human rights of the
people who were present there. It is the fundamental right of
the citizens to gather peacefully to demonstrate and till
yesterday nothing untoward had happened which gave room for
any suspicion that there may be a law and order problem,"
Justice Hegde, a former judge of the Supreme Court, said.
He said that permission had been given to Ramdev to
use the Ramlila ground "may be for yoga but the government of
the day knew that it was not yoga that was going on there."
He said the demonstration was "not physical, it was
purely vocal...Till 11 pm, everything was OK for the
government and suddenly at 12, Baba Ramdev was picked up."
PTI
