On May 11th, 2003 Dakxin Bajrange was arrested for allegedly assaulting Prahlad Chhara. The real reason? Performing plays critical of the police.

Says Paschim, Daxin’s brother, “My brother has been writing plays and performing them with his group DNT-NT Rights Action group, Chharanagar, since 1998. All his plays are against police atrocities on tribals and that is why I feel the police have implicated him without proper investigation. Prahlad Chhara was attacked by some other people from our community but Daxin got the blame.”

Besides his family, several noted playwrights and theatre personalities have come out in defence of Daxin. In a joint statement on Saturday, Dr G.N. Devy, an activist working in the tribal belt, Malayam writer and Jnanpith Award winner M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Bengali writer and recipient of Magsaysay and Jnanpith Awards Mahashweta Devi, noted painter Bhupen Khakkar, Malayalam poet and Secretary, Sahitya Akademi, K. Satchidanandan, and Kanji Patel, a Gujarati writer, expressed shock at Daxin’s arrest.

The statement says, “We are shocked to learn that a young and talented dramatist and theatre director like Daxin Bajrangee has been arrested by police on a very serious charge though he is innocent.”

The publicity soon got Daxin out of jail, but tension between the community and the police continue, even as efforts have been made to resolve these differences.