By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Given the gravity of the situation whereby Muslims are being implicated most of the time in fictitious criminal cases including ones related to terrorism, the Delhi-based Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) will soon build an all-India structure – from village to district to state capital to Delhi – of civil and human rights activists and para-legal workers who could offer assistance to hapless people ignorant of criminal laws and police procedures.
Dr Shakeel Ahmed, Dir, APCR, Adv Y H Muchahala, President, Prof K A Siddique Hassan, Secretary
To discuss the issue and give a final shape to the structure APCR is holding a three-day workshop of its chapter convenors and state office bearers in New Delhi. Today was the second day when the participants, after being refreshed with the current human rights situation in the country and the tools to deal with the violations thereof, discussed the structure in full length. They discussed a mechanism whereby at a single instance of human rights violation by the establishment the structure becomes active without losing much time.
chapter convenors of APCR attending workshop
Set up in 2006, APCR has built a loose network of para-legal workers in about a dozen states. Those para-legal workers have been given training to deal with human and civil rights violation situations and to help the victims to get justice.
On the first day of the ongoing workshop, Dr Shakeel Ahmed, Director, APCR, talked about establishment of justice in contemporary India and the role of informed legal workers. Ahmed belongs to Gujarat, and thus talked in the light of his experience of justice or lack of it in the state.