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Dr Binayak Sen-the brazen injustice
The charges that Dr Sen was the courier for Naxals simply cannot hold. That he carried letters from Narayan Sanyal, a Maoist ideologue under detention at Raipur prison, whom Dr Sen was treating, and gave them to Kolkatta businessman Pijush Guha is simply unsustainable. It is public knowledge that all visits to prison anywhere is under surveillance as per procedure. And nothing can possibly escape the elaborate jail supervision and frisking. Yet the court wouldn’t have any of them,despite there being not a single prosecution witness from among the jail officials confirming this.
If being a postman was the earlier charge, later charge included that he is hobnobbing with ISI. Reportedly there was some communication to one Walter Fernandese of ISI, from Dr Sen’s wife Ilina. The prosecution argued and judge accepted that ISI is the Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Service Intelligence and not the Indian Social Institute as argued by Dr Sen, where Walter Fernandese is the manager. Only on these two counts, justice B P Verma, reportedly held Dr Sen guilty of sedition and imprisoned him for life. If there is a question, how far Chhattisgarh government can go in distorting the truth to fix somebody who is inconvenient to its policies-right or wrong-, it is apparent, that it can be no holds barred.
25th Dec. 2010, the X’mas day, national dailies all over India carried a headline “Binayak Sen sentenced to life”. All those readers, who were in the know of things Pan Indian were shocked beyond belief that an Indian court would actually sentence Dr Sen, a practicing doctor, a human rights activist of global standing, almost Gandhian in his peaceful ways. Most were dumbstruck. Since this sentence by the Raipur Sessions Court of Justice B.P. Verma had all the cruelty of ‘fixing’ the man. Karnataka High Court’s retired Justice Michael Saldhana even termed it as “Judicial Atrocity”. Yes, as the world celebrated X’mas, Dr Sen was accused of criminal conspiracy to commit sedition and sent to prison for life.
Sometime around the middle of 2009, we had carried a small piece “What is wrong with Chhattisgarh Government”? on Dr Binayak Sen’s incarceration in Raipur Central Jail since May 2007.
Before it went to the press for printing, however, Dr Sen was released on bail by Supreme Court on 25th May 2009, exactly after 2 years of being in the prison, on trumped up charges of being a dreaded Naxalite, a ‘Naxal Daakiya’, a Postman for Naxals.
Dr Sen, an alumni of the prestigious Christian Medical College in Vellore, is a Pediatrician by qualification. For over 3 decades, he worked amongst the aadivaasis of Chhattisgarh, virtually as a barefoot doctor. As a PUCL (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, founded by late Jaya Parakash Narayan in 1977) activist and functionary, he used to visit prisons. On one such visit he came across an ailing elderly detenue Narayan Sanyal, jailed on suspicion of being a naxalite. He was in his seventies and was keeping indifferent health. Dr Sen began to treat him. As a PUCL functionary he took on the notorious Salwa Judum – a state armed vigilante army of aadivaasis to ostensibly fight the naxalites and their supporters. These men of Salwa Judum have reportedly done more harm to the cause of anti naxal movement than any positive contribution. Dr Sen wrote to the press and to the government about the violent methods of this vigilante force, which apparently the government did not like and were probably waiting to fix Dr Sen. His treating of Narayan Sanyal in the prison, became handy to the Chhattisgarh administration to plan his eventual arrest and conviction.
As was expected, the arrest of a doctor who works with poor communities in Central India, on trumped-up charges of associating with ‘terrorist’ naxalites, has sparked nationwide protest. What needs to be highlighted is, Dr Sen is one of India’s best known public health specialists. In April 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for global health and human rights in 2008 for his services to the poor and tribal communities, besides CMC Vellore’s Paul Harrison award in 2004, and the Indian Academy of Social Sciences R R Khaitan Gold Medal in 2007. Recognising his work with adivasis and mine workers, he was made a member of the advisory group on health care sector reforms of government of Chhattisgarh. Prior to this engagement with the government, he has been working on health programmes and training rural health workers through his NGO ‘Rupaantar’. Incidentally term ‘Rupaantar’ means transformation. No wonder his transformational work became the model for the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) Programme for the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
While awarding the Paul Harrison by his alma mater, the CMC, the citation read:
“Dr Binayak Sen has been true to the spirit and vision of his alma mater and has carried his dedication to truth and service to the very frontline of the battle. He has broken the mould, redefined the possible role of the doctor in a broken and unjust society, holding the cause much more precious than personal safety. CMC is proud to be associated with Binayak and Illina Sen.”
Thus, despite these highly respected and admirable credentials and his association with the government in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, what really went wrong?
S Niraj Krishna writes in ‘The Week’, “Trouble started with the formation of the state of Chhattisgarh. The lure of mining its mineral rich forest was irresistible for the state and private profiteers. The tribals had to be uprooted. The Maoists opposed it and clashed with state forces”. Rest as the cliché goes, is history. The state administration created armed retaliatory force of adivasis against adivasis in 2005 and named it Salwa Judum. Ever since the creation of Salwa Judum, things in Chhattisgarh did not remain same. Violence increased many fold from both Maoists on one side, state police and Salwa Judum on the other. In all these conflicts adivasis suffered the most. Reportedly it forced the displacement of over 100,000 people, while emptying more than 600 villages. As a PUCL activist Dr Sen highlighted the human rights violations of both police and Salwa Judum. Even Supreme Court has held Salwa Judum as unacceptable.But what angered the state was not merely his reporting of the state sponsored human rights violations but his ‘silence’ on the human rights violations by Maoists. Thus the state and the police harboured ‘a grudge’ against Dr Sen, with state DGP, O.P. Rathore reportedly stating “PUCL ko dekh lenge”
Right enough Dr Sen was arrested on 14th May 2007, on the charge of being ‘Naxal Daakiya’, the postman to Naxals. He remained in Raipur prison for 2 years and 11 days despite national and international hue & cry. On 25th May 2009, on approaching the Supreme Court, it granted bail, reportedly in less than a minute.
Right from beginning the prosecution argument to arrest and detain Dr Sen was on totally untenable crutches. The prosecution tried to run the race without legs and shockingly, Justice B P Verma declared them winner.
The charges that Dr Sen was the courier for Naxals simply cannot hold. That he carried letters from Narayan Sanyal, a Maoist ideologue under detention at Raipur prison, whom Dr Sen was treating, and gave them to Kolkatta businessman Pijush Guha is simply unsustainable. It is public knowledge that all visits to prison anywhere is under surveillance as per procedure. And nothing can possibly escape the elaborate jail supervision and frisking. Yet the court wouldn’t have any of them, despite there being not a single prosecution witness from among the jail officials confirming this.
If being a postman was the earlier charge, later charge included that he is hobnobbing with ISI. Reportedly there was some communication to one Walter Fernandese of ISI, from Dr Sen’s wife Ilina. The prosecution argued and judge accepted that ISI is the Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Service Intelligence and not the Indian Social Institute as argued by Dr Sen, where Walter Fernandese is the manager. Only on these two counts, justice B P Verma, reportedly held Dr Sen guilty of sedition and imprisoned him for life. If there is a question, how far Chhattisgarh government can go in distorting the truth to fix somebody who is inconvenient to its policies-right or wrong-, it is apparent, that it can be no holds barred.
It was reported that legal stalwarts are aghast at the judgement of Raipur session court. There was an avalanche of responses from across the national spectrum condemning the verdict. “Convicting Dr Sen shows that sections of judiciary are willing to act as instruments of state’s policy to silence dissent” said senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
“This is the perversion of the investigative process and an index of the incompetence of the Chhattisgarh police” said Dr Ajai Sahni, a counter-terrorism expert.
“Conviction for treason and awarding life sentence to Dr Sen is retrograde and a blot on the Indian democracy” stated Campaign for Justice and Peace. “Dr Sen’s indictment is utterly condemnable" said a statement from Jan Swasthya Abhiyaan, a coalition of organisations promoting health rights. “It is a travesty of truth and justice” said M.P. and CPI national secretary D. Raja. “We believe the trial of the eminent and committed human rights activist was not fair and this is a miscarriage of justice” stated the statement of the Mazdoor Kissan Sanghatan from Chennai.
A statement signed and released to the press by over 80 prominent writers, journalists, academics including Noam Chomsky and Swami Agnivesh stated “Dr Sen never resorted to violence against any other person, never incited anyone else to resort to violence, never entered into any conspiracy against the constitutional order of the country, and never entered into regular service of any organisation that was involved in any such conspiracy, for furthering its cause. On the contrary, as a doctor he served the people with devotion and helped to save many lives; as a human rights activist he stood up in defence of the rights of the downtrodden. And yet he has been handed down this sentence whose savagery is unbelievable."
“Such an action on the part of the State in the name of preserving the constitutional order will only serve to undermine that constitutional order itself. It will inevitably raise the thought in the minds of many that an order within which the activities of a person like Dr Sen can be held to be ‘seditious’ is not worth defending."
“Such an impression must be avoided. The damage done by this shocking verdict to our constitutional order must be undone. The higher judiciary of the country must hear his appeal expeditiously, must grant him immediate bail till the end of the appeal process, and must judge his case with enlightened reason.”
A childhood friend of Dr Sen, Prof Asit Chakraborthy stated on record, that despite his own ultra-left ideals of those days he couldn’t influence Dr Sen to think of violent means. According to him “Dr Sen always maintained that violence does no good to anyone”, and added “All I have to say is that the life sentence given to Dr. Sen is the death sentence to the Indian democracy”.
Having born to an army doctor, late Col. D. P. Sen and Anasua Sen, young Binayak was always kind and considerate, reminisces his mother. According to her “when Binayak was only 5 years, he was so disturbed that our servant sat on the floor and ate his meals. He asked why he was not sitting at the table with us. As my explanation were not good enough for him, he insisted his thali too be served on the floor. How can such a man incite violence,” she asked. Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan concurred “The Supreme Court has held that the charge of sedition can be upheld only if the prosecution proves that the accused attempted to incite violence or public disorder. It is clear that this case doesn’t meet that standard” he had stated.
While refusing to comment on the verdict Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi had reportedly noted, that dismissing the verdict outright would mean that India was a “banana republic”. But the truth is India may not be banana republic, but a whole lot of Indians have rejected the verdict for its sheer disproportionate ferocity.
Writer Inder Malhotra states that the “verdict is not just flawed but utterly unacceptable since charge of sedition is on very flimsy evidence.”
Addressing the All India Students Association at Jantar Mantar, the dharna hotspot of the national capital, Swami Agnivesh said “If you are charging Sen with sedition, then slap the same charge against me also, I am with him”. Calling Sen a “dedicated soul”, he added that Sen’s case had “shaken everyone”. The dharna saw students, academicians and activists shouting slogans against the life sentence to Sen.
To think that Dr Sen was convicted under a section of Indian penal code first introduced in the 19th century by the then colonial masters, the British, to quell political dissent, is a poor reflection on the Indian state, especially since even the British have discarded its application in the U.K. It was the same provision that was invoked against Mahatma Gandhi by the British. So even after 63 years, this penal provision is being “prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiters." This was how Mahatma argued against the administration on his conviction then.
Yes Dr Sen’s conviction has to be challenged without delay in the High Court to enable the process of law to return a verdict of NOT GUILTY, and release Dr Sen from the utterly brazen injustice meted out to him. Only then the world will take note that judicial process is still alive and kicking in democratic India.
The charges that Dr Sen was the courier for Naxals simply cannot hold. That he carried letters from Narayan Sanyal, a Maoist ideologue under detention at Raipur prison, whom Dr Sen was treating, and gave them to Kolkatta businessman Pijush Guha is simply unsustainable. It is public knowledge that all visits to prison anywhere is under surveillance as per procedure. And nothing can possibly escape the elaborate jail supervision and frisking. Yet the court wouldn’t have any of them,despite there being not a single prosecution witness from among the jail officials confirming this.
If being a postman was the earlier charge, later charge included that he is hobnobbing with ISI. Reportedly there was some communication to one Walter Fernandese of ISI, from Dr Sen’s wife Ilina. The prosecution argued and judge accepted that ISI is the Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Service Intelligence and not the Indian Social Institute as argued by Dr Sen, where Walter Fernandese is the manager. Only on these two counts, justice B P Verma, reportedly held Dr Sen guilty of sedition and imprisoned him for life. If there is a question, how far Chhattisgarh government can go in distorting the truth to fix somebody who is inconvenient to its policies-right or wrong-, it is apparent, that it can be no holds barred.
25th Dec. 2010, the X’mas day, national dailies all over India carried a headline “Binayak Sen sentenced to life”. All those readers, who were in the know of things Pan Indian were shocked beyond belief that an Indian court would actually sentence Dr Sen, a practicing doctor, a human rights activist of global standing, almost Gandhian in his peaceful ways. Most were dumbstruck. Since this sentence by the Raipur Sessions Court of Justice B.P. Verma had all the cruelty of ‘fixing’ the man. Karnataka High Court’s retired Justice Michael Saldhana even termed it as “Judicial Atrocity”. Yes, as the world celebrated X’mas, Dr Sen was accused of criminal conspiracy to commit sedition and sent to prison for life.
Sometime around the middle of 2009, we had carried a small piece “What is wrong with Chhattisgarh Government”? on Dr Binayak Sen’s incarceration in Raipur Central Jail since May 2007.
Before it went to the press for printing, however, Dr Sen was released on bail by Supreme Court on 25th May 2009, exactly after 2 years of being in the prison, on trumped up charges of being a dreaded Naxalite, a ‘Naxal Daakiya’, a Postman for Naxals.
Dr Sen, an alumni of the prestigious Christian Medical College in Vellore, is a Pediatrician by qualification. For over 3 decades, he worked amongst the aadivaasis of Chhattisgarh, virtually as a barefoot doctor. As a PUCL (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, founded by late Jaya Parakash Narayan in 1977) activist and functionary, he used to visit prisons. On one such visit he came across an ailing elderly detenue Narayan Sanyal, jailed on suspicion of being a naxalite. He was in his seventies and was keeping indifferent health. Dr Sen began to treat him. As a PUCL functionary he took on the notorious Salwa Judum – a state armed vigilante army of aadivaasis to ostensibly fight the naxalites and their supporters. These men of Salwa Judum have reportedly done more harm to the cause of anti naxal movement than any positive contribution. Dr Sen wrote to the press and to the government about the violent methods of this vigilante force, which apparently the government did not like and were probably waiting to fix Dr Sen. His treating of Narayan Sanyal in the prison, became handy to the Chhattisgarh administration to plan his eventual arrest and conviction.
As was expected, the arrest of a doctor who works with poor communities in Central India, on trumped-up charges of associating with ‘terrorist’ naxalites, has sparked nationwide protest. What needs to be highlighted is, Dr Sen is one of India’s best known public health specialists. In April 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for global health and human rights in 2008 for his services to the poor and tribal communities, besides CMC Vellore’s Paul Harrison award in 2004, and the Indian Academy of Social Sciences R R Khaitan Gold Medal in 2007. Recognising his work with adivasis and mine workers, he was made a member of the advisory group on health care sector reforms of government of Chhattisgarh. Prior to this engagement with the government, he has been working on health programmes and training rural health workers through his NGO ‘Rupaantar’. Incidentally term ‘Rupaantar’ means transformation. No wonder his transformational work became the model for the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) Programme for the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
While awarding the Paul Harrison by his alma mater, the CMC, the citation read:
“Dr Binayak Sen has been true to the spirit and vision of his alma mater and has carried his dedication to truth and service to the very frontline of the battle. He has broken the mould, redefined the possible role of the doctor in a broken and unjust society, holding the cause much more precious than personal safety. CMC is proud to be associated with Binayak and Illina Sen.”
Thus, despite these highly respected and admirable credentials and his association with the government in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, what really went wrong?
S Niraj Krishna writes in ‘The Week’, “Trouble started with the formation of the state of Chhattisgarh. The lure of mining its mineral rich forest was irresistible for the state and private profiteers. The tribals had to be uprooted. The Maoists opposed it and clashed with state forces”. Rest as the cliché goes, is history. The state administration created armed retaliatory force of adivasis against adivasis in 2005 and named it Salwa Judum. Ever since the creation of Salwa Judum, things in Chhattisgarh did not remain same. Violence increased many fold from both Maoists on one side, state police and Salwa Judum on the other. In all these conflicts adivasis suffered the most. Reportedly it forced the displacement of over 100,000 people, while emptying more than 600 villages. As a PUCL activist Dr Sen highlighted the human rights violations of both police and Salwa Judum. Even Supreme Court has held Salwa Judum as unacceptable.But what angered the state was not merely his reporting of the state sponsored human rights violations but his ‘silence’ on the human rights violations by Maoists. Thus the state and the police harboured ‘a grudge’ against Dr Sen, with state DGP, O.P. Rathore reportedly stating “PUCL ko dekh lenge”
Right enough Dr Sen was arrested on 14th May 2007, on the charge of being ‘Naxal Daakiya’, the postman to Naxals. He remained in Raipur prison for 2 years and 11 days despite national and international hue & cry. On 25th May 2009, on approaching the Supreme Court, it granted bail, reportedly in less than a minute.
Right from beginning the prosecution argument to arrest and detain Dr Sen was on totally untenable crutches. The prosecution tried to run the race without legs and shockingly, Justice B P Verma declared them winner.
The charges that Dr Sen was the courier for Naxals simply cannot hold. That he carried letters from Narayan Sanyal, a Maoist ideologue under detention at Raipur prison, whom Dr Sen was treating, and gave them to Kolkatta businessman Pijush Guha is simply unsustainable. It is public knowledge that all visits to prison anywhere is under surveillance as per procedure. And nothing can possibly escape the elaborate jail supervision and frisking. Yet the court wouldn’t have any of them, despite there being not a single prosecution witness from among the jail officials confirming this.
If being a postman was the earlier charge, later charge included that he is hobnobbing with ISI. Reportedly there was some communication to one Walter Fernandese of ISI, from Dr Sen’s wife Ilina. The prosecution argued and judge accepted that ISI is the Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Service Intelligence and not the Indian Social Institute as argued by Dr Sen, where Walter Fernandese is the manager. Only on these two counts, justice B P Verma, reportedly held Dr Sen guilty of sedition and imprisoned him for life. If there is a question, how far Chhattisgarh government can go in distorting the truth to fix somebody who is inconvenient to its policies-right or wrong-, it is apparent, that it can be no holds barred.
It was reported that legal stalwarts are aghast at the judgement of Raipur session court. There was an avalanche of responses from across the national spectrum condemning the verdict. “Convicting Dr Sen shows that sections of judiciary are willing to act as instruments of state’s policy to silence dissent” said senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
“This is the perversion of the investigative process and an index of the incompetence of the Chhattisgarh police” said Dr Ajai Sahni, a counter-terrorism expert.
“Conviction for treason and awarding life sentence to Dr Sen is retrograde and a blot on the Indian democracy” stated Campaign for Justice and Peace. “Dr Sen’s indictment is utterly condemnable" said a statement from Jan Swasthya Abhiyaan, a coalition of organisations promoting health rights. “It is a travesty of truth and justice” said M.P. and CPI national secretary D. Raja. “We believe the trial of the eminent and committed human rights activist was not fair and this is a miscarriage of justice” stated the statement of the Mazdoor Kissan Sanghatan from Chennai.
A statement signed and released to the press by over 80 prominent writers, journalists, academics including Noam Chomsky and Swami Agnivesh stated “Dr Sen never resorted to violence against any other person, never incited anyone else to resort to violence, never entered into any conspiracy against the constitutional order of the country, and never entered into regular service of any organisation that was involved in any such conspiracy, for furthering its cause. On the contrary, as a doctor he served the people with devotion and helped to save many lives; as a human rights activist he stood up in defence of the rights of the downtrodden. And yet he has been handed down this sentence whose savagery is unbelievable."
“Such an action on the part of the State in the name of preserving the constitutional order will only serve to undermine that constitutional order itself. It will inevitably raise the thought in the minds of many that an order within which the activities of a person like Dr Sen can be held to be ‘seditious’ is not worth defending."
“Such an impression must be avoided. The damage done by this shocking verdict to our constitutional order must be undone. The higher judiciary of the country must hear his appeal expeditiously, must grant him immediate bail till the end of the appeal process, and must judge his case with enlightened reason.”
A childhood friend of Dr Sen, Prof Asit Chakraborthy stated on record, that despite his own ultra-left ideals of those days he couldn’t influence Dr Sen to think of violent means. According to him “Dr Sen always maintained that violence does no good to anyone”, and added “All I have to say is that the life sentence given to Dr. Sen is the death sentence to the Indian democracy”.
Having born to an army doctor, late Col. D. P. Sen and Anasua Sen, young Binayak was always kind and considerate, reminisces his mother. According to her “when Binayak was only 5 years, he was so disturbed that our servant sat on the floor and ate his meals. He asked why he was not sitting at the table with us. As my explanation were not good enough for him, he insisted his thali too be served on the floor. How can such a man incite violence,” she asked. Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan concurred “The Supreme Court has held that the charge of sedition can be upheld only if the prosecution proves that the accused attempted to incite violence or public disorder. It is clear that this case doesn’t meet that standard” he had stated.
While refusing to comment on the verdict Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi had reportedly noted, that dismissing the verdict outright would mean that India was a “banana republic”. But the truth is India may not be banana republic, but a whole lot of Indians have rejected the verdict for its sheer disproportionate ferocity.
Writer Inder Malhotra states that the “verdict is not just flawed but utterly unacceptable since charge of sedition is on very flimsy evidence.”
Addressing the All India Students Association at Jantar Mantar, the dharna hotspot of the national capital, Swami Agnivesh said “If you are charging Sen with sedition, then slap the same charge against me also, I am with him”. Calling Sen a “dedicated soul”, he added that Sen’s case had “shaken everyone”. The dharna saw students, academicians and activists shouting slogans against the life sentence to Sen.
To think that Dr Sen was convicted under a section of Indian penal code first introduced in the 19th century by the then colonial masters, the British, to quell political dissent, is a poor reflection on the Indian state, especially since even the British have discarded its application in the U.K. It was the same provision that was invoked against Mahatma Gandhi by the British. So even after 63 years, this penal provision is being “prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiters." This was how Mahatma argued against the administration on his conviction then.
Yes Dr Sen’s conviction has to be challenged without delay in the High Court to enable the process of law to return a verdict of NOT GUILTY, and release Dr Sen from the utterly brazen injustice meted out to him. Only then the world will take note that judicial process is still alive and kicking in democratic India.
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