On 30 July, the day Pranab Doley was set to be released from jail, his father and lawyer arrived at the prison in the northeastern Indian state of Assam to take the activist home.
Doley, 40, had been arrested weeks earlier after joining a June protest against a proposed luxury hotel near Kaziranga National Park, a Unesco World Heritage Site whose grasslands, wetlands and forests are home to elephants, tigers and the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinos.
A court had granted him and four others bail on 29 July. But the Assam government invoked the National Security Act, a sweeping law that allows authorities to detain people for extended periods without trial, and his release was denied.
The government’s grounds for detaining him, set out in an order seen by the BBC, draw on nearly a decade of allegations against Doley. It cites 13 criminal cases registered since 2017 and describes a pattern of unlawful assembly, intimidation, obstruction and violence. It also alleges suspicious foreign transactions and questions the source of funds for a series of overseas trips.
These charges sparked anger, with critics accusing the government of using a draconian law to scupper a protest against the hotel project.
His lawyer Mrityunjoy Pegu said most of the older cases had been resolved and that only two were pending before Doley’s latest arrest – which he had declared in his affidavit when he contested unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in this year’s state election.
“He is an activist who fights for people’s rights,” Pegu told the BBC. “That is why the police had registered some cases against him.”
Doley’s case has drawn attention to the protest he took part in – and led to a wider debate over land, conservation and development around Kaziranga.
Officials say the new five-star hotel, to be built across 10 acres, will bring investment, jobs and wealthier tourists to Kaziranga. But dozens of families say they are being displaced from land they have cultivated for generations.
The district administration says the land being used for the project is owned by the government.
