Page:Forty Thousand Followers of Gandhi in Prison.djvu/9

 along with them in the hope that those others would pay subsequently for their liberty. The result has been that many persons, who are hauled up, have been let go after a few days’ detention without any charge being framed against them or cases brought.

In Sialkot town itself, we have had the spectacle of nearly a hundred men being arrested in a few days’ time, and after the lapse of a short interval all, but five or six of them, being left off without any explanation being offered. In Daska a small town in Sialkot District the whole bar consists of 6 gentlemen; of these 5 were arrested and the 6th was left out because he was not in the Station at the time. It seems they were not told what they were arrested for but were asked to express regret. They very properly refused to do any such thing as nothing was alleged against them, and were let off after a few days detention. In other places where people were assembled for quite legitimate purposes, the police have come on the scene and declaring the meeting an unlawful assembly, have asked them to disperse.

Allegations are made that entirely religious gatherings have been prohibited and efforts also made to disperse them.

The arrests are being made in an unnecessarily harsh and cruel fashion. Complaints are pouring in every day that the police behave with great brutality, handcuffing all prisoners irrespective of their status and position, making them walk long distances in the burning sun in spite of bodily infirmities, keeping them overcrowded in the police lock-ups and not even giving them the ordinary facilities for performing their ablutions and very often sending them out for necessary purposes in pairs with their hands manacled.

Dragged by the legs.

Picketing parties are very severly handled, and the brutal way in which some of the volunteers of Rawalpindi were treated so late as the end of March, where