Stan Swamy's death and institutional murder

The passing away of the 84-year-old Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Stan Swamy, who was suffering from multiple ailments and was on ventilator support in a hospital in Mumbai, is an indictment of the Indian State and its agencies which have hounded him for months and failed to provide him the minimum human consideration due to a sick old man. He was arrested in the Elgar Parishad violence case last year and charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which gives little scope for bail, and has languished in jail ever since. The case itself is dubious, and the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which took it over from the Maharashtra police, has claimed that a number of persons, including Stan Swamy and other rights activists, were responsible for the violence and charged all of them under the draconian law.

Swamy suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and could not hold a glass in his hand. He also had other ailments and contracted Covid while in jail. Physical disabilities and ailments of accused persons do not attenuate a crime but Stan Swamy’s case should be seen differently. It would need an impossible stretch of imagination to believe that an 84-year-old sick man who served tribals and Adivasis for decades and had no record of any crime in his life would work for the violent overthrow of the Indian State. Swamy’s claim of innocence is more credible than the State’s charges against him, especially because there are convincing grounds to believe that he and the other accused were deliberately implicated in the case. One of his co-accused has produced evidence to show that incriminating evidence was planted in his computer to implicate him and the others.

Stan Swamy’s plea for bail was rejected many times. His health deteriorated in jail and he did not get proper treatment there. He found it difficult to eat, take a bath and walk without help from others. He said a few weeks ago that he would “rather suffer, possibly die very shortly, if this were to go on’’. The dire words have come true, but he died not because his heart stopped but because of the heartlessness of the State and its institutions and agencies. It is custodial killing and institutional murder, and the State is guilty and culpable of it. The State is a human institution, and it should not be so insensitive as to throw a sick old man in jail and let him die there, denying him care and aid, which is his due even if he were a criminal. It should shame all, and the blood is on all hands. Stan Swamy is a martyr to human rights and will remain a living question mark on the nation’s conscience.