Editor’s note: Father Stan Swamy and Arun Ferreira were among the 16 members of civil society – lawyers, professors, poets – who had been arrested under anti-terror laws in a case related to caste violence in Bhima Koregaon village outside Pune in 2018. It is also known as the Elgar Parishad case – the name of a meeting held to commemorate the role of Dalit soldiers in a battle in 1818 in defeating the army of the Peshwa, who had the reputation for being casteist.
The government claims that the 16 people arrested had conspired to instigate the violence and other acts of terror across the country. But since then, independent researchers have produced technical reports alleging that the evidence being marshalled against them had been planted on electronic devices by hackers.
Ferreira was incarcerated along with Swamy in the prison hospital. He has been now released on bail but one of the conditions disallows him from commenting about the case in the media.
“This is not a natural death, but the institutional murder of a gentle soul,” reads the statement by the family members of the people accused in the Elgar Parishad case that was released immediately after Father Stan Swamy’s death on July 5, 2021.
Some may consider these words a bit too harsh given Stan’s age (he was 84) and health (he had Parkinson’s disease). However observing and experiencing the callous treatment meted out to Stan at Taloja Prison, I am inclined to endorse their view.
On December 5, 2020, on Stan’s request, I was allowed by the authorities to stay in his cell at the prison hospital. He wanted to be kept with one of his co-accused so as to have some meaningful conversation. Those were Covid times: no accused were being taken to court, no physical mulakaats with family or friends permitted, no newspapers allowed and restrictions on the movements of all inmates in prison. For Stan, like the rest of us, being in touch and in conversation with our co-accused meant everything.
At the time Stan entered the Taloja Prison outside Mumbai, medical care at the prison hospital was supervised by three people with BAMS degrees (they were Bachelors of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) and a pharmacist. This was the situation before and during Covid.
Apart from these handful of staff, all other tasks such as administering medicines, intravenous injections, para-medical assistance and help in the wards was undertaken by inmates whose labour was unpaid as it would be improper to have their assistance mentioned anywhere on record.
A doctor with expertise in psychiatry would visit the prison once a week. He supervised Stan’s medical care, but merely continued with the medication he had been prescribed before he was arrested.
The prison authorities made no effort to refer Stan to the City Civil Hospital despite his visible Parkinson’s tremors and weak bones. It is not unusual for the authorities to consider such medical conditions unworthy of attention.
Stan’s health deteriorated considerably after he was jailed in October 2020. Before this, he could manage without any assistance, but was later reduced to depending on the help of others, Eventually, he had to move onto the wheelchair.
I distinctively remember that one day early in Stan’s incarceration, when he needed no assistance as such, the prison superintendent insisted that he pose for a photograph with seven or eight plastic sippers, a walking stick, a walker, a cot, a wheelchair and a western commode chair. It had taken a court order for Stan to be allowed a sipper, without which he could not drink water by himself because of his tremors.
Stan stubbornly resisted, but the superintendent wanted evidence to demonstrate that he had provided facilities for any possible medical emergency, present or future. In retrospect, the jailer probably knew that conditions in prison would eventually reduce Stan to the wheelchair.
The deterioration rapidly increased in May 2021. Anticipating a second round of Covid cases, the prison administration decided to empty all the cells on the ground floor of the prison hospital to make space for Covid patients and quarantine facilities. This meant that Stan, myself and the chachha who was our cellmate, would be shifted to the first floor.
We had mixed feelings about this. Going to the first floor would allow us to interact more closely with one of our co-accused, Anand Teltumbde, who was on that floor. But Stan would miss his daily evening walks in the hospital quadrangle.
However as in all such administrative transfers of prisoners, the choice is never ours. On May 10, we were shifted into a cell on the first floor of the hospital.
Anand could now talk to us every day. We also briefly got to meet another co-accused, Hany Babu, before he was taken to a private hospital to treat his eye infection. But for Stan, things had changed for the worse. He immediately developed a severe cough.
The Ayurvedic practitioner on duty decided that this should be treated by a strong antibiotic and prescribed a three-day course of Azithromycin. The cough subsided a bit, but then Stan got diarrhoea. As per prison-medical-practice, it was logical that this too had to be treated with another course of antibiotics. So Stan was additionally on dosages of Metronidazole and Ciprofloxacin. All this made Stan extremely weak. He now required to use a walker in the corridor.
By the next weekly round of the prison superintendent and the senior-most Ayurvedic practitioner, Stan’s weakness was too apparent to ignore. He could not even stand up. The doctor who had earlier prescribed a medical diet of boiled eggs and milk for Stan now advised him to avoid them due to the diarrhoea. On record, the prison was providing Stan with a “high protein diet” but in reality this was not true. Stan had no other choice but to eat less as a means to control his diarrhoea.
He even felt it would not be proper to use more water because the younger inmates in the hospital had to carry bucket-loads of water from almost half a kilometer away to fill the storage drum in our cell.
On noticing this stark deterioration, Anand and I insisted with the doctor that Stan needed to be hospitalised. In fact, the oximeter was daily indicating oxygen (SPO2) levels of around 75%. The Ayurvedic doctor claimed that either the oximeter was malfunctioning or that the readings were incorrect because Stan’s fingers were wrinkled.
But despite him replacing the oximeter or trying several fingers, the readings did not change. Eventually, when Stan was put on oxygen, the doctors realised that the lone oxygen cylinder in the hospital was almost empty. Though still weak and obviously ill, on May 18, 2021, Stan was administered his first dose of the Covid vaccine.
The very same day, he was transported to the City Civil Hospital in South Mumbai. We could not understand the urgency of doing both on the same day, but later realised that it was because the High Court was to hear Stan’s application for bail on medical grounds on the following day. The prison authorities had to show that they had done their best.
Later that evening, when Stan returned to our cell, he was not only visibly tired but also furious. The prison authorities had sent him to the wrong department at the hospital. Instead of taking him to the neurology department, he was taken to the psychiatry department where the interning doctors kept inquiring about his mental health.
On the following day, May 19, during the bail hearings before the High Court, the report of the prison authorities was taken on record. Among other things, it stated that Stan was being “provided high protein diet on daily basis; hot water for bathing daily; he has been provided two attendants (prisoners) at their own willingness for his health and necessary care to avoid fall; he is also provided with mattress, bed sheet, pillow, wheel chair, walker, walking stick, straws, sipper mug, sipper bottle, commode chair and battery cells for his hearing aid” and that he “is also examined and treated by visiting psychiatrist at regular intervals”.
The bench went on to direct the prison authorities to take Stan to the City Civil Hospital in Mumbai the next day for a medical check-up by a panel of specialist doctors such as a neuro physician, ENT specialist, orthopedic surgeon and general surgeon. Stan went to the hospital in the hope that he would be admitted and allowed to rest. But this time too, the visits to the various departments to be administered a battery of tests drained him physically. He returned to his cell in the evening thoroughly exhausted and disheartened.
It was in this context that Stan felt it was futile to visit a hospital outside. If his legal plea to be with his own was denied he would prefer to die in prison. He had expressed this online to the High Court bench hearing his bail petition. Nevertheless, on the next date, May 28, the bench allowed Stan to be treated in a private hospital. On reaching the private hospital, the failure of the prison department was exposed. Stan was found to be Covid positive.
Explanations were immediate. The prison superintendent and doctor told me that Stan had contacted the virus after leaving the prison gate and before entering the private hospital.
It is this callousness and negligence of the prison department and its supervising institutions that are primarily responsible for the death of Father Stan Swamy. Other institutions are equally to blame and are party to his death.
Arun Ferreira, is an activist, cartoonist and lawyer.
