A tale of two doctors

Dr Mohamed Haneef’s release is great news. It was heartening to see the Indian government and media rally around him and his family in their hour of crisis.

Dr Mohamed Haneef’s release is great news. It was heartening to see the Indian government and media rally around him and his family in their hour of crisis. But lest we rejoice at this remarkable show of sensitivity on the part of the government, we need to remember another doctor, Dr Binayak Sen, who for two months has been a resident of Raipur Central Jail right here in India. Neither he nor his family receives any support from ministers, and no functionary advocates his ‘fair treatment’.

Dr Sen, a gold medallist from Christian Medical College, Vellore, was arrested by the Chhattisgarh police on May 14, 2007 for alleged links with Maoists under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act, 2005. The police’s case against him is that he carried letters from Maoists in jail and handed them over to one Piyush Guha, from whom the letters were seized. Nothing incriminating was recovered from Dr Sen nor from his home. It is claimed he is a member of an unlawful organisation (unspecified, presumably Maoist), member of a (unspecified) terrorist gang, holding proceeds from a terrorist act although no such allegation has been made in the FIR. Recently, the high court at Bilaspur too rejected his bail application on flimsy grounds.

So why is Dr Sen being persecuted. As vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh, Dr Sen had been a staunch critic of the Chhattisgarh administration’s counter-insurgency tactics, which include fake encounters and the Salwa Judum-type anti-insurgency campaigns. The Salwa Judum has also led to dozens of villages being burnt and over 60,000 Adivasis being displaced. With pressure mounting on the state government and the PUCL highlighting fake encounter killings in Chhattisgarh, Dr Sen’s arrest appears to be a message from the state to others involved in human rights and civil liberties in the state.

Story continues below this ad

Although much of civil society protested about Dr Sen’s arrest, there has been little response from the state or Central governments. When a delegation met the Union minister of home affairs in Delhi to raise concerns about his detention, they were told that this was a matter within the Chhattisgarh state government’s jurisdiction and the Centre could play no role in the matter.

It is a cruel irony that had the same treatment been meted out to Dr Sen in Australia, the Indian government would have been up in arms. Raipur and Bilaspur fall outside the Union home minister’s jurisdiction. This lack of response is not limited to the government. While the Indian media had focused considerably on Dr Haneef’s case, Dr Sen has been forgotten after his arrest.

The writer is a Delhi-based lawyer and researcher