Hunger strike does the trick,five Africans walk free from detention

When they were finally released on Friday night,Jimmy Oteba of Uganda,Joshua Mensah of Ghana and Vincent Nwachukwu,Olayinka Habeed and Hakim Mohamad of Nigeria were too weak to walk even till the gate of the detention centre. For the last four days of their stay at the centre,the five had not touched food,creating the pressure that finally led to their release.

“There was no other way to register our protest against the way we were being treated. Even though the lower courts had acquitted us after being in prison as undertrials for years,we were not freed,” said Oteba,who was arrested at the IGI Airport in 2007 for allegedly trafficking heroin. He spent four years in the Tihar Jail,till the Dwarka court acquitted him this January. The other four were released in similar cases.

“The Customs Department filed an appeal against their acquittal in the High Court and lodged them in Lampur. But it was not right,if they had been acquitted,they should have been allowed to go. If their visas had expired,they should have been deported. Or else they should have been allowed to remain free till the High Court further orders,” said advocate Yogesh Kumar,who represents the men. “It is clear that their hunger strike proved effective. No one would have heard them otherwise,” he added.

In March,they had written to President Pratibha Patil,the then Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan,the Home Ministry and their respective embassies complaining about ill-treatment at the Lampur centre. “It was a very bad place to be. The centre had six Africans and four Pakistanis and we were as good as prisoners. We had been acquitted,but that didn’t seem to matter,” said Oteba. Kumar said an American would never have been treated the same way. Oteba,too,agreed.

Officials at the centre refused to confirm that their release was prompted by the hunger strike. Incidentally,six African women were also released from Tihar Jail’s Nari Niketan on Friday night.