Eleven months after he was arrested for suspected links with Maoists, Delhi University professor GN Saibaba has gone on an indefinite hunger strike at the Nagpur Central Jail to protest mistreatment.
Saibaba, a wheelchair-bound polio patient, stopped eating on April 11 because he is allegedly being deprived of his prescribed medicines and proper food. He completed five days of fasting on Wednesday, with his lawyers and family claiming that his health is rapidly declining.
“Saibaba’s condition has worsened and he desperately needs proper medical attention, but the jail authorities are refusing to shift him to a hospital,” said Surender Gadling, one of the advocates fighting the professor’s case. “The medicines being given by the jail doctor are not appropriate for him.”
The case
Saibaba’s arrest last year sparked a controversy because of the manner in which the Maharashtra police captured him. An English professor at Delhi’s Ram Lal Anand College and the deputy secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, Saibaba had been questioned at his home the previous year for suspected links with Maoists.
On May 9, 2014, when he was on his way back home, Saibaba’s car was forcefully stopped by men in plain clothes. While they blindfolded his driver, Saibaba was taken away and his wife later got a call from the police in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, informing her of the arrest.
He was accused of hatching a criminal conspiracy with two Naxalite commanders in the forests of Gadchiroli, a charge that many of his supporters find implausible, given that Saibaba is wheelchair-bound. In February, nine months after his arrest, the Gadchiroli sessions court finally framed charges against Saibaba under the controversial Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Since then, his applications for bail on medical grounds have been denied thrice, because reports of the prison’s chief medical officer stated that Saibaba was being treated at the Government Medical College Hospital as well as another super-speciality hospital in Nagpur.
Clamp down
As a polio paralysis and heart patient, Saibaba requires specific prescribed medication on a daily basis, which Nagpur Central Jail had allowed him until the end of March. He was also allowed specific home-made food on medical grounds.
But the trouble started after March 31, when five under-trial prisoners accused of serious offences managed to escape from the jail. “After that they completely stopped permitting home-cooked food for prisoners,” said Gadling.
This is a common practice across prisons in India, says Arun Ferreira, a Mumbai-based social activist who spent nearly five years in prison under UAPA charges before he was released on bail and acquitted. “Whenever there is an escape or attempted escape from a prison, jail authorities clamp down on all facilities for prisoners and do not even make concessions for those in need of medical help,” said Ferreira, who now works with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners.
Health in danger
Saibaba’s wife, Vasantha, met her husband on the day he started his hunger strike and is increasingly worried about his health.
“Already because of his confinement in jail his spine has bent further and he has been experiencing chest pains,” said Vasantha. “When I met him briefly on Saturday he looked very weak and told me he was going on a hunger strike because the medicines he was being given were worsening his health.”
Scroll.in was unable to reach the jail superintendent for comment. Even though jail authorities assured Vasantha last week that Saibaba was being given all his necessary medicines by the prison doctors, she claims he is merely being given pain killers. “Even if he was being given the right medicines, he would not be able to digest them without specific food supplements that the jail is not allowing me to send him,” she said.
Vasantha, who lives in the staff quarters allotted to Saibaba on his Delhi college campus, finds it increasingly difficult to travel to Nagpur to meet her husband. “I have to look after my old mother-in-law and teenaged daughter, and we are facing a lot of pressure from the college to leave the staff quarters,” she said. “Meanwhile, the police has slapped a false case on my husband and is trying to indirectly kill him like this.”
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Saibaba, a wheelchair-bound polio patient, stopped eating on April 11 because he is allegedly being deprived of his prescribed medicines and proper food. He completed five days of fasting on Wednesday, with his lawyers and family claiming that his health is rapidly declining.
“Saibaba’s condition has worsened and he desperately needs proper medical attention, but the jail authorities are refusing to shift him to a hospital,” said Surender Gadling, one of the advocates fighting the professor’s case. “The medicines being given by the jail doctor are not appropriate for him.”
The case
Saibaba’s arrest last year sparked a controversy because of the manner in which the Maharashtra police captured him. An English professor at Delhi’s Ram Lal Anand College and the deputy secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, Saibaba had been questioned at his home the previous year for suspected links with Maoists.
On May 9, 2014, when he was on his way back home, Saibaba’s car was forcefully stopped by men in plain clothes. While they blindfolded his driver, Saibaba was taken away and his wife later got a call from the police in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, informing her of the arrest.
He was accused of hatching a criminal conspiracy with two Naxalite commanders in the forests of Gadchiroli, a charge that many of his supporters find implausible, given that Saibaba is wheelchair-bound. In February, nine months after his arrest, the Gadchiroli sessions court finally framed charges against Saibaba under the controversial Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Since then, his applications for bail on medical grounds have been denied thrice, because reports of the prison’s chief medical officer stated that Saibaba was being treated at the Government Medical College Hospital as well as another super-speciality hospital in Nagpur.
Clamp down
As a polio paralysis and heart patient, Saibaba requires specific prescribed medication on a daily basis, which Nagpur Central Jail had allowed him until the end of March. He was also allowed specific home-made food on medical grounds.
But the trouble started after March 31, when five under-trial prisoners accused of serious offences managed to escape from the jail. “After that they completely stopped permitting home-cooked food for prisoners,” said Gadling.
This is a common practice across prisons in India, says Arun Ferreira, a Mumbai-based social activist who spent nearly five years in prison under UAPA charges before he was released on bail and acquitted. “Whenever there is an escape or attempted escape from a prison, jail authorities clamp down on all facilities for prisoners and do not even make concessions for those in need of medical help,” said Ferreira, who now works with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners.
Health in danger
Saibaba’s wife, Vasantha, met her husband on the day he started his hunger strike and is increasingly worried about his health.
“Already because of his confinement in jail his spine has bent further and he has been experiencing chest pains,” said Vasantha. “When I met him briefly on Saturday he looked very weak and told me he was going on a hunger strike because the medicines he was being given were worsening his health.”
Scroll.in was unable to reach the jail superintendent for comment. Even though jail authorities assured Vasantha last week that Saibaba was being given all his necessary medicines by the prison doctors, she claims he is merely being given pain killers. “Even if he was being given the right medicines, he would not be able to digest them without specific food supplements that the jail is not allowing me to send him,” she said.
Vasantha, who lives in the staff quarters allotted to Saibaba on his Delhi college campus, finds it increasingly difficult to travel to Nagpur to meet her husband. “I have to look after my old mother-in-law and teenaged daughter, and we are facing a lot of pressure from the college to leave the staff quarters,” she said. “Meanwhile, the police has slapped a false case on my husband and is trying to indirectly kill him like this.”