As most of us know fully well, the eminent former Delhi University Assistant Professor and human rights activist Dr GN Saibaba breathed his last on October 12, 2024 in Hyderabad’s Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital after he died of cardiac arrest. His wife Vasantha Kumari disclosed that he had been suffering from an infection just days after he underwent an operation by which his gall bladder was removed. He was just 57 years of age and had he not been convicted wrongly and implicated falsely by Maharashtra police of Gadchiroli who arrested him on May 9, 2014 from his residence in Delhi for suspected Maoist links perhaps he would still have been alive and kicking teaching English like earlier by which many students would have gained further just like earlier!

It cannot be lost sight of that Dr Saibaba who was wheelchair-bound and was also over 90% handicapped since contracting polio as a child had said after his release that it was only by chance that he had come out of jail alive! It must be disclosed here that his body will be donated to a hospital as he earnestly wished for medical research. His wife told news agency PTI that the 10-years of cruel incarceration in an ‘anda cell’ (high security, egg-shaped prison cell) affected his body.

She added that:
He underwent laparoscopic surgery for gall bladder removal and developed post-operative complications and inflammation at the site of surgery.

Since 2003 he was teaching passionately as an Assistant Professor in Ram Lal Anand College affiliated with Delhi University and had he not been wrongly framed, he would perhaps have been teaching with a much more senior designation as more than ten years have elapsed since then. But alas! That was not to be! He is now no more alive!

What really rubbed salt further on his wounds was that he was suspended in 2014 where he was teaching and received only 50 percent of his salary after that! But on March 31, 2021, the RLA College’s Principal Rakesh Kumar Gupta issued a memorandum by which his services were terminated with immediate effect paying him three months salary! This led to huge uproar and a group of writers and academics under the umbrella of ‘Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr GN Saibaba’ to reverse its decision and reinstate him.

It must be noted that even the DU Teachers’ Association (DUTA) also stood in complete solidarity with Dr GN Saibaba and also wrote to the Delhi University Vice-Chancellor stating clearly that:
Any action against Dr GN Saibaba should await the final decision of the Hon’ble High Court of Bombay in the matter of his appeal. It was in July 2021 that Dr Saibaba finally moved the Delhi High Court challenging his termination and seeking his reinstatement and payment of back wages. The case continued to remain pending and was last taken up on September 30, 2024 before the Bench of Hon’ble Ms Justice Jyoti Singh who then relisted it for consideration on November 12 but he died exactly one month before!

It must be apprised here that Dr Saibaba was convicted by a Trial Court for waging war against the State and alleged Maoist links three years later in 2017 to life imprisonment after his arrest in May 2014 by the Gadchiroli police of Maharashtra on allegations that they were members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its frontal group Revolutionary Democratic Front. According to police, many documents, a hard disk and pen drives were seized from his residence. This leading case is a living testimony as to how strict laws are often misused and an innocent has to face punishment for a crime which he had never committed!

But ultimately things changed for the better when in October 2022, we had witnessed how the two-Judge Division Bench of Nagpur Bench of the Mumbai High Court comprising of Hon’ble Mr Justice Vinay Joshi and Hon’ble Mr Justice Valmiki SA Menezes overturned his conviction terming the sanction for prosecution granted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) as null and void. The Nagpur Bench while taking potshots at his conviction said that the sanction given under UAPA by the State authority was without application of mind and the report submitted by the independent authority recommending the invocation of UAPA provisions in the case was cryptic and a laconic half-page communication. It was also held by the Bench that the prosecution failed to prove the case against the accused and ruled that the sanction under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was null and void, and that the entire prosecution case had been vitiated on account of invalid sanction to prosecute the accused.

It merits mentioning that Dr Saibaba had been lodged in the Nagpur Central Jail since his arrest in 2014! It was on October 14, 2022 that the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court discharged him saying that there was no valid sanction for prosecution as required under the UAPA. It also acquitted four others in the case. Narote who was the sixth accused died in August 2022. It is high time and this open and blatant misuse of anti-terror laws must be heavily crushed by ensuring speedier trial and bail to the accused till charges are proved!

It was on March 11, 2024 that even the Supreme Court of India refused to stay the acquittal of Delhi University Professor Dr GN Saibaba and five others in a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. It must be noted that the Apex Court Bench comprising of Hon’ble Mr Justice BR Gavai and Hon’ble Mr Justice Sandeep Mehta observed that the Bombay High Court judgment was well-reasoned and that the presumption of innocence gets fortified after an exoneration. The Apex Court Bench minced just no words to state in no uncertain terms most unequivocally that:
It’s a hard-earned acquittal…after how many years he [Saibaba] could earn it? There are two orders of acquittals in this case. Two different Benches of the High Court have acquitted him. Prima facie, we find that the judgment is very well-reasoned. Absolutely right!

In conclusion, it is definitely high time and now State must at all cost be made to pay huge damages to the family of the accused who is wrongly framed because it is the State and Centre who are the biggest litigator and if a person has to stay in jail for a long term, there must be costs imposed upon the State and Centre who wrongly prosecutes a person and falsely implicates him/her due to which the life of the concerned accused goes for a toss! How can this be ever permitted to go on with impunity in any democratic country? By the way, we are not since last 78 years any longer living in the colonial British rule when the citizens of India had just no fundamental rights whatsoever nor had any other rights and were subjected entirely to the whims and fancies of the Britishers who subjected Indians to merciless torture and jail at the drop of a hat and that too in most deplorable conditions! But now things must change and we have changed in some things but still a lot leaves much to be desired in our criminal justice system which we must have the guts to accept and work unitedly to herald changes in this direction!

In the ultimate analysis, it has to be conceded that State must be definitely made to pay through its nose if it wrongly implicates any person and that too under the most draconian anti-terror laws by which we see how a person after spending a long time in prison hardly manages to breathe in fresh air and dies as has happened most unfortunately in the case of Professor Dr GN Saibaba! Only then will we have the right to call ourselves democratic in the true sense! So also I must dare say here that the Judges who wrongly convict an accused must be also strictly made accountable so that no one is wrongly convicted at the drop of a hat and Judges also approach such cases more carefully ensuring that no one is wrongly convicted just because of being framed by police and prosecuted by the State!

Similarly, the police also must be made more accountable in this regard and those who frame wrongly must not be given medals but rather should be punished most strictly! Of course, this definitely cannot any longer be ever allowed to go on with impunity in a democratic country like India as it brooks no more delay and for this to happen we all have just no option but to unite firmly and exert united pressure on the government of the day to not allow this status quo to continue on this any longer under any circumstances! No denying it!

Sanjeev Sirohi, Advocate,
s/o Col (Retd) BPS Sirohi, A 82, Defence Enclave,
Sardhana Road, Kankerkhera, Meerut - 250001, Uttar Pradesh