At least 26 people, including five juveniles, have been arrested over their alleged involvement in violence that broke out on October 23 in Pasighat district of Arunachal Pradesh during protests against a proposed mega-dam on the Siang river.
Among those arrested are Ebo Mili, a lawyer and activist, and Otul Jerang, a youth leader. Both surrendered at Pasighat police station on October 24.
Mili remains on hunger strike in police custody. Jerang ended his fast after his health deteriorated. Both began fasting in custody after surrendering in connection with the protests. Jerang, who has pre-existing health conditions and relies on prescribed medication, had reportedly been fasting since October 25.
According to a statement issued on October 26 by Pankaj Lamba, East Siang’s superintendent of police, eight cases have been registered in connection with the October 23 incidents. Six other people have been detained for questioning. Investigations are continuing.
The arrests followed protests against the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) and activities related to its pre-feasibility report (PFR). Opposition intensified on October 23, during a 12-hour bandh called by groups resisting the project.
Protesters demanded an immediate halt to work related to the PFR, the release of detainees, the quashing of first information reports (FIRs) and the withdrawal of Central Armed Police Forces personnel deployed in connection with the project.
Four decades of opposition
The proposed 11,200-megawatt SUMP would be built on the Siang, the main channel of the Brahmaputra. The government presents the project as a strategic response to China’s proposed 60,000MW Medog hydropower project upstream. It also argues that the dam would help safeguard India’s water security and regulate floods.
But the project has faced sustained opposition from student groups and residents of more than 27 villages along the Siang. NITI Aayog, the government’s policy think-tank, proposed the project in 2017, though some accounts trace local resistance to the 1980s, when a dam on the Siang was first proposed.
Residents fear that the project would submerge ancestral land, displace villages and damage ecosystems in a seismically active and biodiverse part of the Himalayas.
Opposition intensified again in 2024, amid reports that the central government planned to deploy Central Armed Police Forces to facilitate drilling by the state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) as part of the preliminary survey.
More recently, efforts to prepare the PFR have prompted further protests. The report is intended to assess the project’s viability through preliminary technical, geological and hydrological studies. Residents have sought to block survey work, while organisations in the downstream district of Pasighat have also mobilised against the project.