Civil lib­er­ties ac­tivist G. N. Saibaba lan­guishes in jail, seeks med­ical at­ten­tion as he con­fined to a wheel­chair but the gov­ern­ment of Ma­ha­rash­tra does not re­lent, courts have not helped, in­ter­na­tional re­frain has been dis­missed. WSO protests the treat­ment and seeks ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion. 

In a rather huge hu­man­i­tar­ian move, the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada has come out in sup­port of de­tained civil lib­er­ties ac­tivist G. N. Saibaba, who since his con­vic­tion un­der the dra­con­ian Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act, has been spend­ing time in pain at the Nag­pur Cen­tral prison in the In­dian state of Ma­ha­rash­tra. 

In a state­ment re­leased to the me­dia, WSO Pres­i­dent Mukhbir Singh has said, “G.N. Saibaba’s de­ten­tion and treat­ment is shock­ing.  Dra­con­ian laws like the Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act are a vi­o­la­tion of ba­sic hu­man rights and the rule law.”

With 90 per­cent dis­abil­ity, dis­missed Delhi Uni­ver­sity lec­turer in Eng­lish, civil and hu­man rights ac­tivist G. N. Saibaba, de­spite all le­gal ef­forts and deep con­cerns about his de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health has not been able to awaken the In­dian sys­tem out of stu­por as he suf­fers in the Nag­pur Cen­tral jail with se­ri­ous health is­sues. Sadly, his wife has been run­ning from pil­lar to post to no avail.

“The po­lice from Ma­ha­rash­tra had ab­ducted G. N. Saibaba in May 2014 when he was on his way home from the Delhi Uni­ver­sity and whisked away to Ma­ha­rash­tra, al­leg­ing that he was a Nax­alite ide­o­logue.”

Many hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tions -In­dian and in­ter­na­tional have ex­pressed deep con­cern say­ing that he has been tar­geted be­cause of of his hu­man rights ad­vo­cacy work  and con­victed on false pre­tences.

World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WSO) has called upon the “In­dian gov­ern­ment to en­sure that Saibaba is pro­vided ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties and treat­ment, par­tic­u­larly given his se­ri­ous med­ical is­sues.”

Con­fined to a wheel­chair, Saibaba  suf­fers from sev­eral other se­ri­ous health ail­ments in­clud­ing acute pan­cre­ati­tis, car­diac com­pli­ca­tions, hy­per­ten­sion and a spinal dis­or­der that in­hibits use of his left shoul­der and hand.

Con­victed and sen­tenced by a Ma­ha­rash­tra court to life in prison un­der In­dian anti-ter­ror laws on March 7, 2017 af­ter be­ing ac­cused of “un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ties”, Saibaba is a diehard left­ist who un­flinch­ingly es­poused and sup­ported the cause of hu­man rights of the poor­est of the poor.  As he was able to ob­tain true facts of atroc­i­ties of the In­dian se­cu­rity forces in the ar­eas dom­i­nated by the trib­als and other poor, he pre­sented dev­as­tat­ing de­tails of fact-find­ing mis­sions in Jhark­hand, Kash­mir, As­sam and Ma­nipur. 

The po­lice from Ma­ha­rash­tra had ab­ducted him in May 2014 when he was on his way home from the Delhi Uni­ver­sity and whisked away to Ma­ha­rash­tra, al­leg­ing that he was a Nax­alite ide­o­logue. 

Since be­ing im­pris­oned, Saibaba’s health has con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate and jail au­thor­i­ties have not pro­vided nec­es­sary up­dates to his fam­ily, de­spite re­peated re­quests.  Saibaba has been held in soli­tary con­fine­ment, in the in­fa­mous “unda cell” (egg cell), with­out ad­e­quate light or ven­ti­la­tion. He lacks nec­es­sary med­ical treat­ment and is un­able to use the toi­let with­out se­vere pain and dis­com­fort, be­ing forced to crawl on his hands and el­bows. 

Amnesty In­ter­na­tional has cat­e­gor­i­cally stated that it be­lieves the charges against G N Saibaba are fab­ri­cated and that the law un­der which he was tried and his trial did not meet in­ter­na­tional fair trial stan­dards.

“The charges against G N Saibaba are fab­ri­cated and that the law un­der which he was tried and his trial did not meet in­ter­na­tional fair trial stan­dards”

Amnesty In­ter­na­tional

Ac­cord­ing to Amnesty In­ter­na­tional, “The Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act (UAPA) is a dra­con­ian law that has been abused, with the use of fab­ri­cated ev­i­dence and false charges, to de­tain ac­tivists that are peace­fully ex­er­cis­ing their rights to free­dom of ex­pres­sion and as­so­ci­a­tion. Parts of the UAPA do not meet in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights stan­dards and are likely to lead to hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions. For ex­am­ple, the UAPA di­lutes the ev­i­den­tiary re­quire­ment for ter­ror con­vic­tions and uses sweep­ing de­f­i­n­i­tions of ‘acts of ter­ror­ism’ and ‘mem­ber­ship’ of ‘un­law­ful’ or­ga­ni­za­tions, and does not com­ply with In­di­a’s in­ter­na­tional le­gal oblig­a­tion.”

Ac­tivist writer Arund­hati Roy too has force­fully protested the de­ten­tion and con­vic­tion of Saibaba and ridiculed the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic na­ture of the In­dian gov­ern­ment. 

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70-year old Ratli Bai of Bhairam­garh vil­lage in Chhat­tis­garh’s Bi­japur dis­trict was gifted a pair of slip­pers by Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi un­der the Cha­ran Paduka Scheme (Free Slip­pers Scheme) of the Chhat­tis­garh gov­ern­ment. She got it 12 years af­ter the scheme started in 2005.  Such are the peo­ple, who have not worn slip­pers, who do not get two square meals a day, yet fight for their rights to their tribal lands who have ac­tivists like Saibaba as their pro­tag­o­nists, but who lis­tens?