by DIANA MAVROLEAN & AGROTOSH MOOKERJEE
Mother of Dr Sen on demo in Raipur
The plight of Dr Binayak Sen is of such an extreme nature that even the most abstract and vivid of imaginations is stretched to its absolute limit. The story is set in the relatively newly formed (Nov 2005) lndian state of Chhattisgarh. Were this story chosen to be developed into a work of an horrific, dramatic ‘fiction’ it would read as incredulous, its reader cheated of a comprehensive introduction, a coherent plot development and a logical, even plausible conclusion. The story makes for an uncomfortable read of vengeful and un-ceasing cruelty, ruthless and despicable corruption, twisted and callous contrivance. All this adding up to the totally unacceptable and tragic ‘fact’ that one of lndia’s most distinguished and experienced of doctors specializing in the treatment and prevention of TB, women and child welfare, and a worldwide respected civil rights defender has been incarcerated by the right-wing Chhattisgarh government and state police after a propaganda campaign was launched against him based on fabricated charges of being a courier for the Maoists and of Sedition, a draconian law used during the British Rule to incarcerate the thousands upon thousands who fought for lndia’s freedom. ln the same way Sen’s non-violent philosophy follows the path of past lndian freedom fighters to whom ‘sedition’ charges were also made: Aurobindo Ghosh, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Ghandi. As soon as the judgment appeared, at least two things became quite clear to anyone who took the trouble to read it and the copious and public legal scrutiny that it has generated: firstly, that the judgment was a miscarriage of justice, being secured on extremely dubious evidence; and secondly, that it ignored established legal standards of conviction as m any of the charges against Sen stem from laws that contravene international standards. The repeated delays and the conduct of his trial have only exasperated doubts throughout India and internationally on the fairness and validity of his trial that concluded in an absolute mockery of Rule of Law , thereby the Constitution of lndia .
VR Krishna Iyer succinctly sums up the disappearance of justice, and argues against Sen’s sedition charge in his article: The Quality of Mercy in a Judicial System. The Hindu, 6th March, 2011.
“Most of the defence arguments seem to have been ignored altogether”… “Once again, we are left wondering whether our country is turning into something that its founders would, if our nationalist hagiographies are to be believed, scarcely have recognized: a kleptocratic republic in which the state and powerful institutions are the foremost violators of its laws. When a state organizes the fabrication of evidence for someone like Binayak Sen, and the judge simply relays the opinions of the prosecution without considering the arguments and the collapse of the evidence in his own court, how is one supposed to retain any confidence in the system of justice that we have?”…
Free Binayak Sen for more
(Thanks to Mukul Dube)