RACISM & NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS | NEWS/COMMENTARY

In this picture taken in February 2008, Indian health worker and human rights activist Binayak Sen waves as he is taken to a court in a police van in Raipur. An Indian state government battling a Maoist insurgency said on May 31, 2008 it will press ahead with the trial of a prominent doctor accused of rebel links despite a campaign by Nobel laureates to free him. Binayak Sen, who has been charged under a law criminalising dealings with unlawful organisations, denies accusations that he smuggled out letters from an imprisoned Maoist whom he treated in a central Indian jail.

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19 January 2008

Source: Mail Today

Over 18 months after his incarceration, doctor and activist Binayak Sen is still languishing in jail without any evidence against him. Here’s why he is feared by the government.

BINAYAK SEN was a doctor and human rights activist who had worked many years among the tribals of Chhattisgarh’s tribal districts. His work among the tribals had made him a hero, a man who did what the government did not. To the government, he was the villain who backed the Maoists. He had to be silenced.

Binayak Sen has been in Raipur prison since May 14, 2007. His incarceration has little do with the official charge that he passed on information from jailed Maoists to their friends outside. It’s quite likely that as a human rights activist and selfless doctor who worked among the tribals, he was seen as a Continue reading →