The Chhattisgarh High Court will deliver its verdict on the suspension of sentence and bail application of celebrated activist and doctor Binayak Sen on Thursday. On Wednesday, the court heard the prosecution's case and reserved order for Thursday.
On December 24 last, a Raipur Additional District and Sessions Court convicted Dr. Sen and two others of conspiring to commit sedition, and aiding a banned organisation, and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Dr. Sen was arrested in 2007 in Bilaspur after the Chhattisgarh police apprehended Pijush Guha, a Kolkata-based businessman, in Raipur and found him to be in possession of letters allegedly written by Maoist ideologue Narayan Sanyal.
The police claimed that Mr. Guha said Dr. Sen had ferried the letters between Mr. Guha and Mr. Sanyal, who was imprisoned in the Raipur Central Jail in an unrelated case. Subsequent investigations, the police claimed, revealed that Dr. Sen was in frequent contact with members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Prison records indicate that Dr. Sen visited Mr. Sanyal 33 times.
Dr. Sen has maintained that the visits were in his capacity as a doctor and as the Chhattisgarh Secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).
Accusations
The trial, which lasted more than three years, was marred by accusations that the police had fabricated vital evidence and tutored key witnesses. The prosecution has denied the charges.
On Wednesday, the prosecution sought to convince Justices T.P. Sharma and R.L. Jhanwar that Dr. Sen and Mr. Sanyal had been in constant touch since 2003, and that the PUCL had functioned as a front organisation for the Maoists. It also addressed concerns regarding Mr. Guha's confession that Dr. Sen had served as a courier for Mr. Sanyal. Defence has said that Mr. Guha's confession was made during a police interrogation and hence was inadmissible in court as per the Evidence Act of 1872.
“Just a bottle-opener”
“Mr. Guha's statement was just a bottle-opener,” said prosecutor Kishore Bhaduri. “It was not a confession by an accused, as Mr. Guha was not an accused at the time. It was just a statement made during a preliminary enquiry.” Mr. Bhaduri said documents and circumstantial evidence gathered during police investigations proved that the transfer of letters was not the only offence, but indicated “a strong nexus with these [Maoist] groups.”
“Hearsay”
Last month, defence lawyer Ram Jethmalani said the documents and oral evidence presented by the police were little more than “hearsay.”
“I don't want any special favours, I just want justice based on evidence and law,” said Dipankar Sen, Dr. Sen's younger brother.
