Sharmila in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Oct. 4: Manipur’s most persistent crusader against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, Irom Sharmila, slipped out of Imphal unnoticed barely 12 hours after being freed from police custody and dramatically resurfaced in New Delhi to turn her “regional” campaign into a “national” one.

Embarrassed police officials admitted that they had no inkling of the plan to “smuggle out” Sharmila, who has been on intermittent hunger strike since 2000. Chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh also pleaded ignorance.

Security personnel at Imphal airport did not recognise the crusader — sure to be counted among the most famous faces of Manipur — when she, her elder brother Singhajit Singh and two rights activists boarded the 9.15 am flight to the capital.

Sharmila was freed from the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, where she had been forcibly fed liquids through a nose-pipe, at 5.45 pm yesterday. An Imphal court had handed her an extended one-year jail sentence on charges of trying to commit suicide.

On reaching New Delhi today, the poet-turned-crusader visited Rajghat to lay a wreath at Mahatma Gandhi’s samadhi. Sharmila then proceeded to Jantar Mantar to continue her hunger strike.

“I want to tell the people of India that if Mahatma Gandhi were alive today, he would have launched a movement against the armed forces act. My appeal to the citizens of the country is to join the campaign against the army act,” she said.

Sharmila’s crusade against the act, a piece of legislation seen by many as a licence for the army to run riot during counter-insurgency operations, began when she was 28.

The trigger for her campaign was the death of 10 civilians in firing by Assam Rifles personnel at a bus stop near Imphal airport on November 2, 2000. The soldiers opened fire on civilians in retaliation after an attack by militants.