Pranab Doley in Assam: The Indian activist jailed after taking on a hotel in Kaziranga - BBC News

An activist's detention has brought under focus a larger battle over land and development around the famed Kaziranga National Park.

Image source, Youth for BokakhatImage caption, Pranab Doley is a well-known activist around Kaziranga in Assam

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.