G.N. Saibaba’s life was a reflection of both the bleak promises of India’s constitutional protection and the courage of a common man. Prof. G.N. Saibaba, an ardent upholder of human rights and a brave critic of the state’s repressive policies, passed away on October 12, 2024.
Justice failed and humanity derailed
The term “allegedly” has come to be used conveniently to publicly denounce someone as guilty, even in the absence of evidence. Sentenced to life imprisonment under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for being “allegedly” involved with the criminalised Communist Party of India (Maoist) and their plans for spreading “terror“, Saibaba was arrested on 9 May 2014, for engaging in a criminal conspiracy under Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code. Immediately after he was arrested, his service as a professor of English at Ramlal Anand College, University of Delhi, was terminated. His wish to teach in a classroom once again perished, just like his morale.
G.N. Saibaba’s life was a reflection of both, the bleak promises of India’s constitutional protection and the courage of a common man.
Since 2014, he was imprisoned for eight years, following which a bench of the Bombay High Court concluded that the basis of allegations charged against him – “implicating” evidence in the form of documents, videos and photographs recovered from his house by the police – was hollow and not subject to prosecution. As unreal as it gets, the items counted as evidence included newspapers, umbrellas and bananas – interpreted by the prosecutor as tools for identification amongst the Naxalites, together with the presence of Naxalite literature, corroborating plans for initiating terrorist activities.
However, the allegations were enough for the Court to sentence G.N. Saibaba to life imprisonment. After about six years of the pronouncement of the sentence, the Court ruled that the process of evidence collection was questionable since an illiterate individual was planted as a witness by the police during the seizure. Yet on the very same day, the Supreme Court proceeded to halt the decision, robbing Saibaba of his new-found freedom in an instant. Every time acquittal was procured from the lower court, the state made every effort to ensure the order was stayed.
In March this year, he was granted acquittal by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court, which stated that the charges against him couldn’t be proven accurate by the prosecution.
In March this year, he was granted acquittal by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court, which stated that the charges against him couldn’t be proven accurate by the prosecution. He procured acquittal after being subjected to a period of incarceration which lasted 10 years.
Saibaba’s pact with courage
G.N. Saibaba was a fierce critic of Operation Greenhunt, an explicit paramilitary operation implemented by the Congress-led government in 2009 which impinged upon the lives and livelihoods of adivasis residing in the “Red Corridor”. He aimed to work in the area of education for the marginalised, highlighting the elitist nature of the so-called “liberal” central and private institutions.
According to Medha Deo, Programme Director at the Fair Trial Fellowship, Saibaba’s principal aim was to reform the legal system, building upon his observation that nearly 80 percent of the inmates at the Nagpur Central Jail hailed from the most marginalised of communities, detained in prison for five to eight years even for minor offenses. He argued that bail is a luxury for the marginalised, the access to which is denied to them by the Courts.
It is stated that an individual’s life is a chronicle of his time. In Saibaba’s case, this phrase demands to be turned upside-down. His life is not just a record of his time but also the deep-seated systemic injustice that time refused to record. In poetry, he discovered a tool to resist the angst rising within him as a response to injustice, as he wrote in a poetic reply to his wife, dated July 25, 2018:
‘I have a pact of love with beauty,
I have a pact of blood with my people‘
Physical and mental torture on G.N. Saibaba
After his release, Saibaba publicly admitted that the treatment meted out to him was inhumane, amounting to torture, denying medications, putting his life at risk, the essence of which is captured in Dr. G.N. Saibaba’s words, ‘No matter how grave a crime, or how big a gangster, they aren’t placed in the Anda Cell in Nagpur Central Prison. In the prison’s 90-year-old history, I think I was the only one who was put there.’
In 2020, his plea for emergency bail was rejected, as was his request for a video call with his mother before she passed away, taking a toll on his emotional well-being. Dr. Saibaba described the period of imprisonment as something akin to an “agni pariksha“, ignited by the UAPA. Even after the infliction of fraudulent charges and subsequent imprisonment for eight years, his liberty was short-lived, merely seven months before he breathed his last.
When an advocate of tribal rights, Stan Swamy, passed away in prison when he was denied a straw and sipper and treated for Parkinson’s disease, Saibaba wrote to his wife, ‘You might hear of another Swamy if no treatment is provided (to me).‘ He succumbed to COVID-19 in prison, access to treatment was forbidden and gradually, his paralysis intensified. These instances render a clear picture of the state’s attack on his health, psychological, emotional, and physical. He asserted, ‘I was dragged by my legs and they thrashed on my legs ., … For seven years in the Anda Cell, I could only see the prison wall above and around me.’ According to Saibaba, it was purely ‘by chance‘ that he came out of the prison alive.
“Guilty until proven innocent”
According to advocate Mihir Desai who represented him before the Bombay High Court, Saibaba’s trial was a cycle of tragedies, the foremost tragedy being his conviction. Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, but was suspected of by the state, his case sheds light on the fact that dissent can never be reason enough for unraveling the unjust practice of assuming someone to be guilty and placing the onus upon the individual to prove their innocence.
In a country where the judiciary is expected to secure the rights of the people and be the disseminator of justice, the Supreme Court was instrumental in confining G.N. Saibaba behind the walls of the Anda Cell, Nagpur, the experience of which exacerbated the emotional turmoil caused by polio.
For Medha Deo, his trial was a testament to the bridge between the ill-functioning of the judicial system and its conceptualisation within the constitution.
For Medha Deo, his trial was a testament to the bridge between the ill-functioning of the judicial system and its conceptualisation within the constitution. It was both “systemic and legal in nature“. The state must understand that an individual’s socio-economic background renders them vulnerable before a legal system that makes it difficult for the marginalised to assert their rights.
For the courts, he was the “brain”, a “master planner”, a “scapegoat”, conspiring against the nation, since they had no time to attend to the voices and demands of the adivasis in central India and their mounting opposition to capitalism in the name of development within the country. At this juncture, when innumerable innocent prisoners remain detained under the UAPA, his death leaves a profound void within the landscape of deteriorating human rights.
A stolen life
Saibaba’s arrest was a draconian response to human rights activists and observers resistant to the state’s practice of outlawing human rights defenders in the country.
Why are the voices expressing resistance against the state deemed as anti-national? Why is dissent viewed as a law and order issue and met with repression? Amid such a landscape, one is compelled to wonder, “Who was G.N. Saibaba?” Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote about Saibaba in ‘A Continuous Ode to Life’:
‘His personal anguish at being uprooted from his family and community becomes also that of the farmers and adivasi people uprooted from their land to give way to mining corporations.‘
