A pair of burly hands affixes several lengths of masking tape on open brown bag. Then the same hands are shown as those of a Chhattisgarh police officer; one hand holds the bag open as the other riffles through the contents. “This is what we have taken,” says a voice in Hindi.
As the police leave the house of Binayak Sen, award-winning physician and human rights activist, and walk down the stairs, one can still see the same bag, unsealed and swinging from the right hand of a policeman.
This footage was shot with the permission of a District Magistrate when Dr. Sen's house was searched on May 19, 2007. On Christmas Eve this year, Dr. Sen, Kolkata businessman Pijush Guha and the alleged Maoist ideologue Narayan Sanyal were convicted of supporting the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and criminal conspiracy to commit sedition. They were sentenced to life imprisonment by B.P. Verma of the Raipur Sessions Court.
The police claim that Mr. Guha was arrested on May 6, 2007, and found to be in possession of banned literature and three handwritten letters. The case revolves round these letters, written in the Raipur jail by Mr. Sanyal and passed on to Mr. Guha through Dr. Sen.
Dr. Sen had visited Mr. Sanyal in jail in his capacity as president of the Chhattisgarh chapter of the People's Union for Civil Liberties. However, the prosecution was unable to explain how the letters changed hands. Jailers testified that the two men were never left alone and that no letter could have been passed on. Hence, the entire prosecution case rested on documents seized from Dr. Sen and Mr. Guha. Documents that defence says were planted on the two men.
Defence lawyer Surinder Singh pointed out that while the police claimed that all evidence was sealed and deposited in a safe house, the video clearly shows otherwise. He noted that the police claim that all documents were signed by Dr. Sen, investigating officer B.B. Rajpoot and two independent witnesses.
Mysterious signature
Further, an unsigned letter, labelled Article 37 (A-37) — allegedly seized from Dr. Sen's house — and purportedly written by a CPI (Maoist) member — did not carry the signature of either Dr. Sen or Mr. Rajpoot but was mysteriously signed by both witnesses.
Mr. Singh said: “Our copies [of the seized documents] only bear the signatures of Dr. Sen and Mr. Rajpoot, and have not been signed by the witnesses. Yet, the documents submitted in court have all four signatures. This suggests that the witnesses did not sign the documents at the time they were seized, but signed them at a later stage after the documents were supposedly sealed.”
Justice Verma did not allow the video to be screened in his courtroom, nor has it been mentioned in his 91-page judgment, written in Hindi. Also unremarked is defence lawyer S.K. Farhan's point that none of the letters supposedly seized from Mr. Guha's possession carries his signature. Moreover, Mr. Guha's arrest memo carries no mention of the seized documents.
On the matter of A-37, Mr. Verma supports the police version of events. In paragraph 46 of the judgment, he writes: “It has been suggested that A-37 was not seized from Dr. Sen's house, however this has been contradicted by the witnesses, so it appears that A-37 was seized from Dr. Sen's house. It is proved from the testimonies of B.S. Jagrit, Mr. Rajpoot and Shyamsunder Rao that articles A-19 to A-46 were seized from Dr. Sen's house.” While Mr. Jagrit and Mr. Rajpoot are both policemen, Mr. Rao is one of the witnesses whose signatures were missing from police copies of the seized documents.
Witness' statements
Commenting on the witness statements, Mr. Verma writes in paragraph 104: “While the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses certainly have minor absences and contradictions, they are not of a material nature and cannot be used to label the prosecution's case suspicious, nor can the prosecution's witnesses be considered untrustworthy.”
This article was corrected for a factual error on December 29, 2010
Keywords: Binayak Sen
Comments:
I have known Binayak and Ilina since 1981. Their love for the downtrodden is well known. They are the champions of civil rights. Not for a moment, I believe that they can be engaged in sedition. The case against Binayak is concoted, evidence falsified, and court judgement open to question. Hope good sense will prevail and Binayak will be absolved of all charges.
The Binayak Sen case, with its ridiculously crude and amateurish fabrication of 'evidence' against him, is eerily reminiscent of the Dreyfus case that rocked France between the 1890s and the early 1900s. An innocent man was similarly dishonoured publicly and sentenced to life in prison as a scapegoat for the real criminals, with poorly-concocted so-called evidence being produced similarly against him, merely because he was conveniently Jewish. With the Sen case, it seems that the Maoist is the new Jew. This case throws up serious questions against governance in India. What real avenues does the common Indian have for redressing grievances? Writing petitions endlessly and leaving oneself vulnerable to vengeful parties acting against your interests? Running endlessly from babu to babu, shelling out bribes and debasing oneself to no avail? Engaging in unaffordable, endless and fruitless litigation? India has, in the past, been accused in various international forums of serious human rights violations. This case would appear to lend much credibility to those accusations, and would also seriously undermine India's interests in regions like Kashmir by strengthening the charges made by India's enemies. It is our lawmakers that come across here as the real 'enemy of the state', with their vindictive approach and embarrassing bungling of this case that makes our legal process look incompetent and irresponsible.
Indian courts have now openly started conspiring with the advocates of pseudo-nationlism. The limit and scope of sedition are now being widened enough to contain and suppress all dissenting democratic voices. This is nothing but state fascism. Dr.Sen has in the past repeated his belief and respect in the Indian judiciary many times. He cannot be a person who upheld violence and sedition. His way is that of democracy and non-violence and he belongs to a rare species who use their profession for a bigger social cause. Perhaps even better than those tinted black coats sitting and serving at the temples of law. It is high time that Dr.Sen is freed from state conspiracy and allowed to carry out his social mission. All democratic forces in and outside the country should decry this state fascism.
Even if we consider that Binayak Sen is innocent, he has been wrongly implicated through fabrication of 'evidence'. Why you people are talking so much? you are free to go to higher court and get the justice. The way in which you are speaking against the judgement and making so much noise gives rise to the impression you are not ready to accept the truth and you are trying to influence the judgement. Which can not be acceted in a democracy like India.
As a citizen of India, it shows us how vulnerable and fragile we all are to criminal sophistry, legal entrapment and this is surprisingly about freedom itself. Not the kind being advocated by the media, but for those who don't find voice or are actively oppressed and vilified by the same media in direct collusion. I fear misguided moral outrage the most, for under its guise the worst kind of injustice is perpetrated. The wisdom of the crowds isn't as dangerous as the mind of a mob.
a concerted effort with reams of judicial logic in print, on TV and online, to lobby, why Binayak Sen is not a traitor & why the court verdict is so harsh with amusement. Typically it is the same media baying for a lynching, instant justice and allegation mongering. Does this show a Communist, Maoist influence in the media and the so called liberal circles?
This is shame for the nation. No one of us will be able to say with clear conscience that 'I am proud to be an Indian'. Honestly I am not.
Present day maoists are owner of huge money. This maoney they earned by extortion. People should think twicw before expressing sympathy for maoists.
The problem is that we who claim to be good citizens send a corpus of 540 odd thugs to parliament, voting and democratically empowering them. About our police, the less said the better. But one thing I strongly advocate. Police should be paid better. The thugs we empower to run the country use every state machinery, including police, like sildanefil citrate, because they basically are impotent. Democracy's about people. So we, the people have to rise, and stand upright. We've to stop bribing the railway ticket checker, we've to stop bribing the traffic havaldar.