Prisoners of conscience

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Sometimes they do, even for the most creative minds.

Take Maharashtra's Taloja Jail, on the outskirts of Mumbai. For the last almost three years, it's been home to some of the country's most valuable public intellectuals, and also the site of their steady deterioration. The Bhima Koregaon trial is yet to begin, but the 16 accused have already been punished, by the NIA that's handling their case and the jail authorities.

Father Stan Swamy was cheerful when brought to Taloja. The 83-year-old who suffered from Parkinson's, but was denied a sipper and straw (till the court ordered it), and even an extra sweater and blanket in winter, wrote optimistically about how his inmates looked after him: "Despite all odds, humanity is bubbling in Taloja prison." Seven months there, and this priest who had earlier written that "listening to the life narratives of the poor prisoners is my joy in Taloja", was rejecting medical care and telling the court that all he wanted was to spend his last days with his "own" (the Adivasis of Jharkhand). Two months later, the undertrial prisoner lay dead in a hospital in Mumbai.

Telugu revolutionary poet Varavara Rao, who's spent nine years of his life inside various jails, including in solitary confinement, never stopped writing in custody. After being arrested for the Bhima Koregaon case, "VV", as he is often called, spent 16 months in Pune's Yerawada Jail, where he continued to write. But three months in Taloja Jail were enough to drive the former professor of literature and pioneer of modern Telugu poetry to dementia. So pitiable was his condition that the Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra government to shift him to a private hospital and foot the bill. The 82-year-old is now out on permanent medical bail, granted by the Supreme Court.

Within nine months of his arrest, 54-year-old Delhi University Prof Hany Babu had to be shifted on court orders to a private hospital for a severe eye infection, with his family paying the bill. By the time 65-year-old Vernon Gonsalves was taken to hospital for dengue - again on court orders - his condition was so bad that he had to be given oxygen.

Gautam Navlakha was an active 68-year-old when he surrendered to the NIA at the start of the Covid pandemic. As a founder-member of the leading human rights organisation, the People's Union of Democratic Rights, he would often travel with fact-finding teams to the sites of the worst State excesses, be it Kashmir or Bastar. Human rights defenders are never popular, and Navlakha, too, had, in 2011, when Omar Abdullah was CM, been refused permission to enter Kashmir. Detained at Srinagar airport, he was sent back to Delhi. Navlakha was with the Economic and Political Weekly from the late 70s right till 2012. The internationally respected journal is known for its comprehensive analyses of what life in India means for the most neglected sections.

But none of this could have prepared Navlakha for Taloja Jail, where he was deprived of a pair of spectacles, a chair, a walk outside the high-security Anda cell, a P G Wodehouse book, and medical attention, till the court intervened. Alas, even the court could not get him the right to make a phone call home. But last week, when it seemed clear that the Supreme Court was going to grant his plea of house arrest, the NIA began promising him the moon: a cot, a mattress, even home-cooked food. Having failed to convince the judges that if let out, Navlakha would succeed in "destroying the country", the NIA imposed the strictest conditions possible for his house arrest.

All these public intellectuals have, throughout their lives, fought for the rights of those who have no voice. Most of them belong to well-to-do families, and could have lived comfortable lives, without bothering about those less privileged. Is it just their relentless opposition to State policies that gets the NIA's goat, or is it also their privileged background? What makes the Central agency and the Taloja Jail authorities push these political prisoners to such an extent that their families are forced to reduce their demands: starting off fighting for regular bail, reducing that to medical bail, from there to hospitalisation and finally to house arrest? Navlakha's house arrest conditions include no access to the internet, one 10-minute call from a police phone per day, CCTV cameras as well as six policemen watching him for which he pays Rs 2.4 lakh. All this for only a month. But it's freedom from the hell that is Taloja Jail.

(Jyoti Punwani is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.