A day after a contingent of Gujarat’s Dalit-Adivasi activists were detained at Jhansi railway station, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested eight senior activists for trying to hold a previously-scheduled convention against the rising cases of atrocities against Dalits in the state’s capital, Lucknow.

However, soon after the UP police successfully got the convention stalled, it released the activists after taking a bond assurance of Rs. 25000 from them.

The activists – former IPS officer and a known-advocate of police reforms S.R. Darapuri, academic Ramesh Dixit, journalists Ram Kumar and Ashish Awasthi, and four others, were arrested under Section 151 (preventing cognisable offences) of the code of criminal procedure, minutes before the convention was about to start at the Lucknow press club.

The vichaar goshthi or convention, purported to hold discussions on increasing attacks on Dalits in UP under the BJP state government, had assumed added significance in light of the detention of the Dalit-Adivasi activists at Jhansi on July 2.