One of the darkest chapters in the annals of the Emergency in Karnataka was the death of actor and civil rights activist Snehalatha Reddy.
She was arrested in May 1976 for sheltering trade union leader George Fernandes and others. An asthmatic, her health deteriorated during her stay in prison and she died on January 20, 1977, a few days after her release on parole. She and her filmmaker-husband Pattabhirama Reddy were among the most vocal voices against the Emergency.
Nandana Reddy, child rights activist and daughter of Snehalatha and Pattabhirama, recalls how the family woke up to the news of thousands being arrested, including many family friends such as Madhu Limaye and Ramakrishna Hegde. “We were shocked, and my parents were outraged.”
The Reddy family stayed active in opposing the curbing of civil rights and Mr. Fernandes was sheltered by them. “I provided him with some of my books in which he had marked passages to quote in his underground newsletter, and I still have these books with me,” recalls Ms. Nandana Reddy.
Soon, the police were on to the family. “I was picked up for questioning that morning as I went to the British Council… I was shown a stick of dynamite and asked what it was,” says Ms. Nandana Reddy. The entire family faced interrogation and her mother was arrested. “That was when our nightmare really began.”
Snehalatha was put in a cell with no companions and the family could visit her once a week. She had no access to books and could not meet other political prisoners in jail. As her health deteriorated, being a chronic asthma patient, she was made to inject herself with adrenaline and was not hospitalised despite medical advice.
It was only in January 1977, that she was released on parole “probably because they did not want her to die in jail”. She died a few days later on January 20, when Ms. Nandana Reddy was away in Delhi. The family found a diary she had kept in jail, a lot of which was about injustice done to the other women prisoners, but much of it was her “frustration and anger at the injustice and tyranny of a dictatorship”.
Ms. Nandana Reddy, then in her twenties, expected to see huge protests against the suspension of fundamental rights. “But Bangalore was silent, permeated with an uneasy calm and fearful hush. But, for most, it was business as usual and many justified the Emergency saying that finally we would be rid of red tape and corruption.”
