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Top Rights activist languishes in
jail, India claims he's terrorist
RAIPUR / WSN Bureau
 India's Home
Minister P Chidambaram talked about balancing human rights concerns
when he brought the new black law to allegedly counter terrorism.
This case will be of special interest to him since it explains how
laws can be used to snatch all human rights away.
For 19 months, this man has been in jail.
His CV? A product of the
Christian Medical
College, Vellore where he won the prestigious Paul Harrison Award in
2004 for being the most outstanding student.
He trained villagers in rural centres in Hoshangabad district
of Madhya Pradesh, largely inhabited by tribals suffering from
malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis. He and his wife Iliana have
been doing so for the last 30 years based in village Rasulia. He is
the first Asian to be honoured by the Jonathan Mann Award in 2008
for his work in health and human rights.
He did not care to distinguish between ailing villagers on
the basis of their political allegiances: Naxalites or Salwa Judum.
If they were sick they had to be healed.
His clinic is named after Indira Gandhi.
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Top ranking rogue gallery members in
India get
advantage of bail but Dr Binayak Sen, human being extra ordinary
and winner of the 2008 Jonathan Mann Award languishes behind
bars for 19 months now. A Tale of Murder of Human Rights. |
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He has been now languishing in jail on charges of treason for
siding with the Naxalites. More than 20 Nobel Prize winners have
appealed to
India's
President to intervene on his behalf.
Meet Dr Binayak Sen. Arrested on
May 14, 2007 in
Bilaspur under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act as well as
the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Indian Penal Code.
Accused of conspiring with, and being a conduit between Naxalites.
His trial began on April 30 last year and 38 prosecution
witnesses have so far been examined.
The sheer length of Sen’s incarceration, said the leading
Indian daily Indian Express, is significant. This detention has been
without bail. And who got benefit of bail in the meantime?
Meet the rogue's gallery heroes.
Sanjeev Nanda, prime accused in the BMW hit-and-run case, got
bail just four months after being arrested.
Vikas Yadav, accused of shooting model Jessica Lall in full
public view, not only got anticipatory bail, but after a brief four
months in jail, was free on bail. (He was convicted later.)
Yet Sen, accused with evidence that is fast unravelling, has
spent the last 19 months in jail.
The reasons for denying bail have also raised a storm. Sen is
accused of non-bailable offences, and the special laws he has been
booked under don’t affect his bail rights. Sen first applied for
bail before the Raipur Sessions Court and then the Chhattisgarh High
Court in July 2007, soon after his arrest.
Typically, a bail court’s primary concern is not the
applicant’s guilt or innocence; it is to ask whether, if released on
bail, the applicant would interfere with the trial. Will he, for
instance, run away? Influence witnesses? Is he required for further
police inquiry? How respectable is he? Sen has been honoured by the
Indian
Academy of Social Sciences and recently won the Jonathan Mann Award
for Global Health.
“Sen was never required for investigation,” DGP Vishwa Ranjan
concedes, but cautions: “I will definitely oppose bail as Binayak
Sen is an important man, and in a position to influence witnesses”.
But while opposing bail in court, the state of Chhattisgarh didn’t
list out any witnesses likely to be influenced. According to Sen’s
lawyer, Supreme Court senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, this is because
“the evidence against Sen is documentary, there are no witnesses to
influence”.
The Sessions Court and Chhattisgarh High Court denied him
bail in July 2007. Since charges had not yet been framed at the
time, the courts relied on police allegations of a “strong prima
facie case” to deny bail. This bail rejection was questioned before
the Supreme Court in December 2007. Since there is no inherent right
to approach the Supreme Court for bail, the court can refuse to hear
the matter altogether. On
December 10, 2007,
the Supreme Court declined to hear the petition but gave no reason.
For the Chhattisgarh government, this counts as moral
validation. Soon after winning the state elections in November 2008,
Chief Minister Raman Singh brushed off questions on Binayak Sen
with: “even the Supreme Court has denied him bail. What is my role?”
Since the matter is in court, judges — past and present — are
reluctant to take a public stand. Former chief justice and current
NHRC chairperson Rajendra Babu declined to comment as “the matter is
sub-judice”. But former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee termed Sen’s
detention “on fabricated charges” as “illegal” and Rajeev Dhavan
called it “the single biggest blot on freedom for bail that we have
seen in a while”.
The Chhattisgarh High Court rejected a second, more recent
bail petition in November 2008. This time, the court refused to
consider the unravelling evidence in the trial court as weighing the
“arguments relating to the examination of the witnesses”is not an
exercise to be undertaken by a bail court”.
Sen’s arrest has provoked international outrage, with
demonstrations in
India
and abroad. Amnesty International, as well as 22 Nobel laureates —
Amartya Sen included — have called for his release. BJP spokesperson
and senior lawyer Ravi Shankar Prasad, the party in-charge for
Chhattisgarh, dismisses this as part of “a systemic international
campaign which ignores that in the recent state elections, the
people of Chhattisgarh — both urban and rural— have spoken in favour
of the government”.
Sen’s legal woes have taken on political colours. State
Congress leader Ajit Jogi says: “I know Binayak Sen to be an honest,
selfless, server of the poor. To deny bail to such a person is
totally wrong. While I can’t comment on the court’s decision, if I
was chief minister, I wouldn’t have opposed bail”.
Wife Ilina Sen recently met P Chidambaram. “He was very
sympathetic” she says, “but pointed out that the matter was out of
his hands, and the decision rested solely with the state of
Chhattisgarh”. The Chhattisgarh government continues to oppose bail.
Ravi Shankar Prasad cautions against “glossing over the naked
violence of the Naxalites under the cover of Binayak Sen”.
At the centre of the storm, Sen remains in Central Jail,
Raipur and his trial will likely last a couple of years. Doctors
from Sen’s alma mater CMC Vellore, along with medics from
Raipur and Bilaspur,
have examined him and certify to his “persistent loss of weight,
heart problems and arthritis”. Wife Ilina worries that Sen has a
“suspected prostrate problem”. Illness, alone, can be grounds for
granting bail. Meanwhile, the trial continues in Raipur. Key
witnesses are turning hostile, and the case itself is fast
unravelling.
14 January 2009
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