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One year of Dr Binayak Sen in jail
WSN Bureau 

It has been exactly one year India courted shame by putting behind bars public health specialist and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen who has been outspoken critic of India’s Salwa Judum policy — arming the poor to kill other armed poor because the nation state cannot deal with the root causes of Maoist insurgency. The policy is now being investigated for excesses by the National Human Rights Commission after a Supreme Court order. Dr Sen was arrested on May 14, 2007, for allegedly passing letters from a Naxalite leader - who he had been treating - to another inside the Raipur jail. On April 30, almost a year after his arrest, six witnesses were examined. Considering that there are 83 witnesses and the pace at which our judicial system works, it looks doubtful that Dr Sen will be judged in a court of law in a hurry. In any case, New Delhi is not dying to improve its reputation. 

Days before he was arrested, Dr Sen had said that “the people who have been protesting against  [the Salwa Judum] and trying to bring before the world the reality of these campaigns.... human  rights workers like myself.... have also been targeted through State action”. Clearly, the police of the nation state made a deliberate effort to crack down on dissent or, in this case, violently silence a strongly variant point of view on the Salwa Judum policy of arming villagers in Naxal strongholds. It is for speaking out against this ‘official’ policy from the ground level in Chhattisgarh as opposed to speaking out against the Salwa Judum as many other observers have while visiting the area – that has got Dr Sen in jail for what seems like an indefinite period. That the Supreme Court had also recently made pretty much the same observation that he had makes Dr Sen’s incarceration even more unjust and bizarre.

14 May, 2008
 

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