‘Surprised that I came out of jail alive’
| Date :08-Mar-2024 |
Staff Reporter
Former Delhi University (DU) Professor G N Saibaba, on Thursday, after his release from Nagpur Central Jail, said it is a miracle that he could come out alive from the jail despite facing the brutal jail life. The Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court on Tuesday, acquitted Saibaba in an alleged Maoist links case, noting that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against Saibaba. “I was targeted and imprisoned for my human rights work by the then government in the state,” said Saibaba while interacting with mediapersons after his release from the jail here on Thursday. Saibaba recalled, during the press conference, the struggle he faced all these years in prison. “I entered the prison as a healthy man except my polio and wheel chair bound condition. But, now I am facing such severe health conditions, heart condition, liver problem etc.”
“Even after doctors’ declaration of severe health condition, I was not given active medical treatment,” said Saibaba.
Saibaba questioned why such huge kind of suffering was given to him and others? “Today, you can see, not once but twice, that the higher judiciary confirmed that this case is without facts and evidence. Why it took so long? Who will bring my life back?” The DU professor also expressed sadness over death of his Anda Cell companion accused Pandu Narote who was a tribal from Gadchiroli. Saibaba said that Narote was a young man who died during the course of injustice and incarceration, wherein he was also falsely implicated. This haunted him all these years since he died. How, he died of a simple fever, is it possible to die for a person in this modern times because of simple fever? questioned Saibaba.
“Ten years ago before this case was instituted, I was asked by veteran democratic human rights people in Delhi like Justice Sacchar and retired IAS officer B D Sharma worked for the Adivasi people, to co-ordinate human rights organisation groups and civil society groups to raise our voice for the rights of the tribal people,” said Saibaba. He further said that during that ‘Salva Judum’, the tribal were crushed and their lands were grabbed. They (tribal) trusted me as a kind of foot soldier who will bring a kind of unity of all democratic voices among themselves and all of us to lead a kind of platform of the civil society groups, democratic groups, dalit organisations, tribal organisations and individual people, he explained. In March 2017, a sessions court in Gadchiroli convicted Saibaba and 5 others, including a journalist and a JNU student, for alleged Maoist links and for indulging in activities amounting to waging war against the country.