Indian Anti-Corruption Activist Anna Hazare Arrested In Widespread Crackdown

India’s leading anti-corruption crusader and more than 1,300 supporters were arrested and jailed on Tuesday as they prepared to launch a national campaign against bribery and graft.

Their Gandhi-inspired campaign was launched amid rising public anger over a series of corruption scandals in which several ministers and senior Congress Party figures have been arrested and the government has lost more than £25 billion in lost revenues.

In the last year the government has been hit by corruption allegations over contracts for Delhi’s Commonwealth Games, the award of mobile telephone operator licences and the construction of an apartment block for the widows of war heroes which were instead allocated to army chiefs and relatives of top politicians.

Anna Hazare, a 74 year old former soldier turned Gandhian activist, was on Tuesday night being held in New Delhi’s notorious Tihar Jail with some of the country’s most feared criminals while his supporters were detained in a local sports stadium.

Their arrests appeared to be part of a government move to halt their protests, which have cast the ruling Congress-led administration as soft on corruption, and check growing pressure for India’s judiciary and prime minister’s office to come under the scrutiny of a new anti-corruption ombudsman.

The move backfired dramatically yesterday when Mr Hazare anticipated his arrest and released a pre-recorded video calling for a Gandhi-inspired “second freedom struggle” for a new system for checking corruption and urged his supporters to “fill the jails” through peaceful protests.

His arrest, along with fellow ‘Lokpal’ campaign leaders, the leading lawyer Shanti Bhushan and India’s former top female police chief Kiran Bedi, provoked anger in the country’s Lok Sabha parliament where MPs demanded an explanation from prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

Dr Singh’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram later dismissed objections to the arrests and said the police had detained Mr Hazare and his supporters because they had pledged to defy a ban on a their planned protest yesterday. Anti-corruption protests in New Delhi have been banned as a threat to the peace.

“Anna Hazare’s decision to defy prohibitory orders led police to believe that he could commit a cognisable offence. If someone says he will defy prohibitory orders, it is unacceptable in a democracy,” he said.

His arrest was denounced by his close aide, campaigning lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who said the police action was “totally undemocratic”.

“Time has come to rise up against this government. We appeal to people to protest against the government peacefully,” said Mr Bhushan, whose father was among those arrested as they launched their protest in the heart of the capital New Delhi.

He said the government had banned a mobile phone company from distributing text messages to promote their campaign and compared its actions to those under the 1975 Emergency, in which the late Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi dismissed elections and ruled by decree.

Mr Hazare had been arrested in his home even though he had not broken a police order banning protests in the capital, he said.

“We had given written undertaking to the police that the protest will be completely peaceful … The government’s intentions are akin to the Emergency days. They are trying to choke the voice of common man,” he said.

The clash between the government and Mr Hazare’s supporters came hours after prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh pledged a strong anti-corruption ombudsman in his speech to mark the 64th anniversary of India’s independence on Sunday but said campaigners should now allow the parliament to draft the bill without resorting to mass protests or hunger strikes to influence it.

Police had broken up a similar protest earlier this summer by another anti-corruption leader, the popular Yoga and Hindu spiritual guru Baba Ramdev and his supporters. The United States had earlier warned the Indian government against further restrictions on peaceful democratic protests.