Maintaining that she was shocked and saddened by the news that Dr. G.N Saibaba’s application for permanent bail has been rejected on Wednesday by the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court, Vasantha, wife of Delhi University's Prof. G.N. Saibaba, while speaking to The Hindu on Wednesday evening said: “I am disappointed”.
The Committee for the Defense and Release of Dr. G.N. Saibaba will give you our official statement she maintained refusing to elaborate further.
The Committee in its statement said the move more “than being just inhuman and insensitive, what this yet again lays bare is the intolerance of the Indian state towards any voice of dissent.’’
When contacted his lawyer Surendra Gadling said: ``We have 48 hours to surrender or appeal to the Supreme Court. We haven’t finalised what to do.''
Meanwhile, Hany Babu M T, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, from the Committee noted that it is rather disturbing that while all the five other co-accused in the same case along with G.N. Saibaba have been granted regular bail, a ninety percent disabled professor is being denied the same.
``We condemn this rejection of permanent bail of G.N. Saibaba and the quashing of his interim bail in no uncertain terms and appeal to all progressive and democratic people to immediately stand up to such a travesty of justice,’’ he noted.
Though writer Arundhati Roy, opted not to react in press to the notice issued to her on an intervention plea filed by advocate Bhandarkar , who had blamed Ms. Roy for “interference with the administration of justice”, the Committee noted that ``the same High Court judgment that cancelled Saibaba’s bail petition also ordered proceedings for criminal contempt to be initiated against Arundhati Roy for her article titled Professor, POW against GN Saibaba’s incarceration that was published in Outlook magazine on 18thMay, 2015.
The Order has issued notice to the author for action for contempt of Court, returnable on 25.01.2016. We condemn this outright throttling of freedom of speech and expressions.’’
