A.S. Vasantha, wife of G.N. Saibaba, said Friday’s high court judgment gave her hope for other imprisoned political prisoners but she was sad that Pandu had died.
She was referring to Pandu Pora Narote, one of the five others convicted and sentenced along with Saibaba. Narote had died of swine flu in August at a hospital while in custody.
“This judgment gives me hope for all others in jail, but we are very sad that Pandu died. I thank the judges and everyone who has supported me in these difficult years,” Vasantha told The Telegraph after the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court acquitted all the convicts.
The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G.N. Saibaba, a group campaigning for the release of the former professor and the other accused, had blamed the “utter negligence of Nagpur central jail” for Narote’s death. “He lost his life on August 25 in the Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur, under custody and handcuffed,” according to G. Hargopal, a professor who heads the Saibaba defence committee.
Vasantha said Saibaba would have to be shifted immediately to hospital. “We are hopeful that he (Saibaba) will be released tonight or tomorrow morning. My brother-in-law is there, and the lawyers are filing the documents required. I will also go,” she said.
“He will immediately have to be admitted to hospital. After meeting him, we will decide if we should take him to a hospital in Hyderabad (where he has relatives) or bring him to Delhi.”
Saibaba, paralysed up to his waist because of polio, has 19 chronic and acute post-polio medical conditions. He has excruciating pain in both hands, back and hip, because of which he cannot sit for more than a few minutes.
Vasantha had complained repeatedly that he was being denied physiotherapy and his cell, with an open roof, had worsened his health. Lodged in the Nagpur jail since 2014, Saibaba has several times protested the poor conditions in jail.
“He was sacked from DU (Delhi University) last year, (with the authorities) citing his conviction in 2017. We will appeal for him to be reinstated. We knew he was innocent all along,” Vasantha said on Friday. Saibaba was an English professor at Ram Lal Anand College, under DU.
Saibaba’s former lawyer Surendra Gadling and DU professor Hany Babu M.T., who was part of the Saibaba defence committee, are in prison in the Elgaar Parishad case.
Born in Amalapuram, Andhra Pradesh, to a peasant family in 1967, Saibaba was part of the Radical Students Union in the University of Hyderabad during the Mandal movement for reservation.
He took a break during his PhD to become a whole-timer with the All India People’s Resistance Forum (AIPRF), which evolved into the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) in 2005. The organisation led several fact-finding teams to disturbed areas like Kashmir and parts of the Northeast and held seminars to highlight human rights violations.
The RDF was listed as a CPI Maoist front by the Union home ministry in February 2014. Saibaba had left full-time work with the AIPRF and joined DU as a professor in 2003 -- first at Sri Venkateswara College and then at RLA College.
