Guest Comments by the Asian Centre for the Progress of Peoples

CHHATTISGARH, India – A well-known physician and human-rights worker, Dr Binayak Sen, was sentenced to life imprisonment here after his on-bail-release from a two-year jail term.

On December 24, Judge B.P. Verma of the Raipur Additional District and Sessions Court held Sen guilty of conspiring to commit sedition and supporting the activities of criminal organizations. The legislation involved has been widely criticized as extremely vague and subjective and for giving the state arbitrary powers to silence dissent.

Allegedly, Sen transferred letters from Narayan Sanyal, a Maoist prisoner in Raipur Central Jail, to Pijush Guha, a Maoist leader. Although Sen visited Narayan, there has been no explanation of how the prisoner could have handed him letters in the presence of jail officials. Nor could the police prove that Sen met Guha.

According to Professor Madabhushi Sridhar from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University of Law in Hyderabad, a “crime has to be proved by the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt.  Even if a single reasonable doubt is left unanswered, a conviction is not possible…. Judge B.P. Verma was supposed to explain all the reasonable doubts raised by the defence to establish the conviction, but he did not.”

Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director, says, “Life imprisonment is an unusually harsh sentence for anyone, much less for an internationally recognized human-rights defender never charged with any act of violence.” The verdict seriously intimidates other human-rights defenders who would provide a peaceful outlet for public grievances.

A pioneer of providing health care to the marginalized and indigenous communities in Chhattisgarh, where the state police and armed Maoists have clashed for seven years, Sen was the first to report on Salwa Judum, a vigilante army supported by the government that contributes to serious human-rights violations in tribal areas. He has been outspoken and critical of human-rights violations. Even so, the government should respect freedom of expression.

According to Sen, “Nobody is giving up violence. Neither the state nor the Maoists are giving up violence. I am interested to advance the cause of peace with justice.” He has endeavored to organize community-based health programs, to advocate for tribal people on health issues and to report human-rights violations.

Many people believe that the recent verdict, a way to punish dissidents, results from flawed procedures. “The judge has become a willing instrument of the state to victimize people who raise their voices against (its) human-rights abuses,” said Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan. “It's not just a gross miscarriage of justice. It's outrageous.”

Earlier Sen, a recipient of the prestigious R.R. Keithan Gold Medal of the Indian Academy of Social Sciences and the globally recognized Jonathan Mann Award, was arrested in 2007. Two years later, he was released on bail.

Charges that Sen helped the outlawed Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh have not been corroborated by witnesses or by evidence in court. On the contrary, the prosecution used fabricated documents and contradictory testimonies.