On 24th December 2010, Dr. Binayak Sen- a man who has become cause célèbre across the country was sentence to life imprisonment by a sessions court of Chattisgrah .
Sen, a Calcutta boy’s school’s student later acquiring his medical degree from Christian medical college, Vellore, dedicated his whole life advocating the cause of the deceased and the poor. He concentrated his work in the rural tribal areas of the Chattisgarh state, doubling up as a human rights activist. While Sen worked with the state government on health sector reform, he also strongly criticized the govt. on human rights violation during the anti-naxalite operations.
However, criminal charges against him overshadowed all the limelight he was living in. 14th May 2007 was the day when Sen was arrested on the offence of acting as a courier between jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal and businessman Piyush Saha. Questions however may arise about his 33 visits to the Naxalite leader, though all there visits were with prior police permission. Since then Sen has experienced tremendous ups and downs in life.
There has been spontaneous surge of outrage in civil society and the media over this scandalous miscarriage of justice. But there was little that could be done . The state had itself timed it well. It was a day before Christmas. The high court and the Supreme Court were on vacation; most lawyers were away. It would be at least two weeks before Sen’s family could even appeal. Enough time for the news to sink in; the message to go out .
The Chattisgarh Director of Police (DGP) Vishwa Ranjan had himself admitted in an interview three years back that if possible he would Keep Sen under surveillance but not in prison. But ever since that day and even till now neither the DGP nor the state persecution has come up with a concrete and convincing evidence of his involvement and violation of law though it’s a different issue that he himself refuted what he had mentioned in his earlier interview. What the police and administration instead relied upon was creating baseless paranoia.
The whole case persecution case built against Sen is itself ludicrous. Its replete with malevolent faux pax that its hard to believe that the State had the audacity to charge Sen of ‘Conspiracy against the State’. According to the state prosecutor Mr. TC Pandya , Sen who is the Vice President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) (set up by Late Freedom Fighter Jaiprakash Narayan in 1976 during emergency ) had met the jailed Naxal ideologue Nrayan Sanyal 33 times in prison between 26 May and 30 June ’06 . During this time he had smuggled out seditious letters from Sanyal and passed them on to tendu leaf contractor Piyush Guha , who supposedly acted as the courier for Maoists . Three of such letters were seized when he was captured in a May ’07 . Based on this Pandya established that he was trying to establish an urban network of Maoists . In fact the content of these three letters is itself ludicrous .They are addressed to a “Dear Mr. P”, “Friend V’ and a “Friend“ and are unsigned . They could have been written by anyone and planted on Guha .
There are other glaring discrepancies After Sen was arrested in ’07, the police had built such a miasma around him that he was denied the bail twice both by Chattisgarh Court and The Supreme Court and this is what an honest man has received from the Country’s Judiciary system .
Back in 2007 , when news had first started appearing in local newspapers that the police had declared "Naxal Leader Binayak Sen absconding" , far from running away or seeking anticipatory bail as his well wishers had urged .Sen who was in Kolkata on a visit to his mother’s house came back to Raipur immediately . His reaction was that there must have been some misunderstanding. And driven by his idealistic belief in Indian Democracy , his own good intention and years of public service , hew ent voluntarily to the police station to clear the air . They arrested him instead . The Chattisgarh Police , did not arrested some dreaded combatant on the run , they arrested a citizen who had gone to them in good faith .
The irrational doggedness with which the police pursued the case has only driven the message home harder . On 31st December 2007 , seven months after his arrest , the Indian Academy of Social Sciences conferred the RR Keithan Gold Medal on Binayak Sen . On May 2008 , still in jail he was given the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights . Around the same time , 22 Nobel Prize Winners appealed to the Indian Government for his release . On 24th December 2010, Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Now as the fight for his release stretches in the months ahead , he will become a test case for pulling back of some of the draconian laws that are threatening to change the very fabric of our Democracy . As Amartya Sen says ‘Democracy has to be judged not just by institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard. “ Let’s hope that the country where Barack Obama’s heroics are more sung and the ten year hunger strike of Irom Sharmila is barely even spoken of in media wakes up to the real philosophy of Democracy.
Sen, a Calcutta boy’s school’s student later acquiring his medical degree from Christian medical college, Vellore, dedicated his whole life advocating the cause of the deceased and the poor. He concentrated his work in the rural tribal areas of the Chattisgarh state, doubling up as a human rights activist. While Sen worked with the state government on health sector reform, he also strongly criticized the govt. on human rights violation during the anti-naxalite operations.
There has been spontaneous surge of outrage in civil society and the media over this scandalous miscarriage of justice. But there was little that could be done . The state had itself timed it well. It was a day before Christmas. The high court and the Supreme Court were on vacation; most lawyers were away. It would be at least two weeks before Sen’s family could even appeal. Enough time for the news to sink in; the message to go out .
The Chattisgarh Director of Police (DGP) Vishwa Ranjan had himself admitted in an interview three years back that if possible he would Keep Sen under surveillance but not in prison. But ever since that day and even till now neither the DGP nor the state persecution has come up with a concrete and convincing evidence of his involvement and violation of law though it’s a different issue that he himself refuted what he had mentioned in his earlier interview. What the police and administration instead relied upon was creating baseless paranoia.
The whole case persecution case built against Sen is itself ludicrous. Its replete with malevolent faux pax that its hard to believe that the State had the audacity to charge Sen of ‘Conspiracy against the State’. According to the state prosecutor Mr. TC Pandya , Sen who is the Vice President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) (set up by Late Freedom Fighter Jaiprakash Narayan in 1976 during emergency ) had met the jailed Naxal ideologue Nrayan Sanyal 33 times in prison between 26 May and 30 June ’06 . During this time he had smuggled out seditious letters from Sanyal and passed them on to tendu leaf contractor Piyush Guha , who supposedly acted as the courier for Maoists . Three of such letters were seized when he was captured in a May ’07 . Based on this Pandya established that he was trying to establish an urban network of Maoists . In fact the content of these three letters is itself ludicrous .They are addressed to a “Dear Mr. P”, “Friend V’ and a “Friend“ and are unsigned . They could have been written by anyone and planted on Guha .
There are other glaring discrepancies After Sen was arrested in ’07, the police had built such a miasma around him that he was denied the bail twice both by Chattisgarh Court and The Supreme Court and this is what an honest man has received from the Country’s Judiciary system .
Back in 2007 , when news had first started appearing in local newspapers that the police had declared "Naxal Leader Binayak Sen absconding" , far from running away or seeking anticipatory bail as his well wishers had urged .Sen who was in Kolkata on a visit to his mother’s house came back to Raipur immediately . His reaction was that there must have been some misunderstanding. And driven by his idealistic belief in Indian Democracy , his own good intention and years of public service , hew ent voluntarily to the police station to clear the air . They arrested him instead . The Chattisgarh Police , did not arrested some dreaded combatant on the run , they arrested a citizen who had gone to them in good faith .
The irrational doggedness with which the police pursued the case has only driven the message home harder . On 31st December 2007 , seven months after his arrest , the Indian Academy of Social Sciences conferred the RR Keithan Gold Medal on Binayak Sen . On May 2008 , still in jail he was given the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights . Around the same time , 22 Nobel Prize Winners appealed to the Indian Government for his release . On 24th December 2010, Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Now as the fight for his release stretches in the months ahead , he will become a test case for pulling back of some of the draconian laws that are threatening to change the very fabric of our Democracy . As Amartya Sen says ‘Democracy has to be judged not just by institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard. “ Let’s hope that the country where Barack Obama’s heroics are more sung and the ten year hunger strike of Irom Sharmila is barely even spoken of in media wakes up to the real philosophy of Democracy.
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