Binayak Sen sentenced to life imprisonment
|
COMMENTS 
A Chhattisgarh court convicted doctor and civil rights activist Dr Binayak Sen to life imprisonment for sedition and conspiracy, charges that he and his supporters maintain are false
Doctor and human rights activist Binayak Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition and conspiracy, on December 24, 2010, by a district and sessions court judge in Chhattisgarh. He was acquitted of the third charge of waging war against the state.
Sen was accused of carrying messages and letters to underground Maoists from Narayan Sanyal, when he visited Sanyal in jail in order to treat him. Sanyal and Piyush Guha, both accused of being Maoists, were also sentenced to life imprisonment along with Sen.
Sen’s arrest on May 14, 2007, and incarceration in jail without trial for two years before being let out on bail in 2009, was highly controversial. A ‘Free Binayak Sen’ campaign was started which attracted international attention when 12 Nobel laureates wrote to Indian leaders asking that Sen be released from jail as he awaited trial.
Sen has worked in Chhattisgarh providing treatment to poor people since 1981. He was general secretary of the state committee of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and vice-president of the national committee. His work covered fake encounters, custodial deaths, hunger deaths, malnutrition, and dysentery, none of which showed the government up in a good light.
He was an outspoken critic of the controversial Salwa Judum, a vigilante force created by the state government to counter the Maoists, but which functioned pretty much as a law unto itself. His supporters believe he is paying the price for his opposition to the Salwa Judum and his criticism of the state’s governance.
“This is completely irresponsible,” his wife Ilina Sen said of the verdict during an interview on the news channel NDTV. “There was not a single piece of evidence against him.”
Dr Sen did his MD in paediatrics from Christian Medical College, Vellore, before joining the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, one of India’s most prestigious universities, as a faculty member.
His commitment to rural health programmes began in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh, where he worked in a community-based rural health centre focusing on tuberculosis.
He joined the Medico Friend Circle, a national organisation of health workers trying to evolve an alternative health system to cater to economically weak sections of rural India, and later worked with mine workers in Dalli Rajahara, helping them set up their own hospital. In the late-’80s, he moved to Raipur and was a member of the state advisory committee that pioneered a community-based health worker programme across the state, called the Mitanin programme. He was involved in several initiatives to deliver good, low-cost healthcare to rural communities. His NGO Rupantar, deploys and monitors community health workers spread across 20 villages. It works in other areas too like alcohol abuse, violence against women, and food security.
Dr Sen was awarded the Paul Harrison Award for a lifetime of service to the rural poor, by Christian Medical College, Vellore and the R R Keithan Gold Medal by the Indian Academy of Social Sciences for his work in improving the quality of life of the poor. In April 2008, while he was still incarcerated, the Global Health Council nominated him winner of the 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health.
Read excerpts of Sen’s keynote address given at the Third National Bioethics Conference held on December 19, 2010, at: http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/Binayak%20Sen
Source: Hindustan Times, December 24, 2010
New York Times, December 24, 2010