Sentence first, verdict afterwards: The Economist

India’s anti-Maoist laws become an international embarrassment
Tribulation, but not a trial, for Dr Sen

May 29th 2008 | RAIPUR
From The Economist print edition

HOTEL MAHENDRA, in the capital of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, seems an unlikely spot from which to hatch a plot against the government. It is a humdrum hotel overlooking the city’s jail. But, according to state prosecutors, it is one of the places where Binayak Sen, a celebrated doctor and human-rights activist, conspired with Chhattisgarh’s Maoist insurgents. The doctor, whose trial began in April, has now spent over a year detained on the other side of the prison wall.

Dr Sen worked in the remote reaches of Chhattisgarh, one of several places where India’s Maoists (known as Naxalites) hold sway, raiding police stations, sabotaging telecom towers and intimidating villagers. He helped set up a hospital for miners and trained community health-workers. He is also an official of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which campaigns against human-rights abuses. He became a vocal critic of the government’s strategy of arming and mobilising villagers against the Naxalites, thereby relying on vigilantes to quell an insurgency which the state itself has failed to end.

Dr Sen was charged under both the national penal code and a sweeping state law. The Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act criminalises a broad array of dealings with unlawful organisations, including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the main Naxalite party.

Dr Sen’s alleged crime was to pass on letters from an imprisoned Naxalite leader, whom he treated in the city jail. According to PUCL, the law has also been used against two cloth merchants for providing “camouflage” uniforms, two journalists, and a doctor whose prescription was found on a Maoist. The union describes the measure as a draconian law that relies on guilt by association. PUCL is disputing the law’s constitutionality in the Indian Supreme Court. It filed its petition on May 14th, the anniversary of Dr Sen’s arrest last year.

The state may well struggle to prove its case against the doctor. His meetings with Naxalite inmates were supervised and approved by the prison authorities. The manager of the Hotel Mahendra, called as a prosecution witness, turned hostile on the stand. But perhaps the state does not really need to convict Dr Sen. He has now spent more than a year imprisoned without bail. The next hearing is not scheduled until late June. The authorities have shown all too clearly that they can punish people under their “special” law without having to prove their case in court.

But if the act was intended to keep Chhattisgarh’s troubles out of the media, it has backfired spectacularly. Dr Sen’s case is becoming a cause célèbre, championed by 22 Nobel prizewinners, who signed a letter to the prime minister in May calling for his release. In April Dr Sen won the Jonathan Mann award for global health and human rights. The prize-giving ceremony will take place in a luxury hotel in Washington. Meanwhile, Dr Sen will remain in his wretched cell, in the shadow of Hotel Mahendra.

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May 30, 2008 | Filed Under Press Reports 

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One Response to “Sentence first, verdict afterwards: The Economist”

  1. Breaking The Shackles Of Indian Politics « Bewajeh on June 28th, 2008 9:02 pm

    [...] Guha also mentions something quite relevant and that is the lack of spine and the incompetence of the State when it comes to tackling extremism, both the causes and the effects. Thus the State has time and again been spineless to deal with elements that have tried to destroyed the fabric of Indian social life and spread disharmony. Raj Thackeray never had to worry about consequences, nor did Congress leaders in 1984 or BJP leaders in Gujarat.  Equally importantly, the causes are never tackled and fuel more anti-State sentiments. More often than not, liberation movements - be it the Naxalite movement, the movements in the Eastern States or even the much more complicated Kashmiri movement - can find either the cause or the solution if not both to their woes in greater political and economic participation. While dealing with the anti-State symptoms of these movements of the terrorism kind is important and is something which the State has done, dealing with the cause is just as important and this is where the State has failed miserably over the years.  Dealing with the communist threat - a threat which Guha talks about explicitly here - will be better done by bringing prosperity and participation to these people and not through debacles like Salva Judum and Binayak Sen. [...]

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