Human rights activist and former Naxalite A. Vasu, popularly known as ‘GROW’ Vasu, has termed his fight over the last seven years against alleged extra-judicial police killings of two Naxalites in the Nilambur forests, leading to his 45-day-long imprisonment, as an effort to defeat attempts by the authorities to hush it up and draw people’s attention to it.
He was talking at a reception organised by the People’s Human Rights Collective here on his release earlier this month. The Judicial First Class Magistrate Court at Kunnamangalam acquitted the 93-year-old activist for want of evidence on September 13.
Mr. Vasu said he had only hoped to light a small lamp in the darkness through his protest. But it exploded beyond all his expectations, thanks to the coverage of the media and the people who accepted it. “It was unexpected. The timing also proved critical. It would not have had the same impact had it happened four years ago. It happened at a time when people have been stripped of their hopes and were nursing their wounds. I don’t take pride in it as I was just a reason,” he said.
He slammed “fake progressives” as the most regressive as they were responsible for hushing up the extrajudicial killings. The rulers who claim to be the biggest authorities in Marxisim and Leninism were the ones to turn a blind eye to martyrs. Mr. Vasu asked how the Communists could turn a blind eye to martyrdom. “Don’t they knew that martyrs had taken history and the society forward,” he asked.
He said that his latest fight had made him so popular that even in Kochi, where he was previously recognised by only a handful of people, he was being widely recognised. Mr. Vasu said a foundation had been laid for taking the fight forward.
Activist Thushar Nirmal Sarathi presided over the event.
