Bombay High Court Nagpur Bench on Friday acquitted former Delhi University, Professor GN Saibaba, in the case where he was convicted for his alleged links to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The life term awarded to Saibaba is also set aside.
Justices Rohit Deo and Anil Pansare held the proceedings in the 2017 trial null and void in the absence of a valid sanction under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 prior to the commencement of the trial.
The sessions court in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district framed charges against the political activist without getting sanction from the appropriate authority in clear violation of the UAPA act. The Centre gave its sanction after the trial proceedings were already underway.
"We are inclined to hold, that every safeguard, however minuscule, legislatively provided to the accused, must be zealously protected," the 101-paged judgment read.
BOOM breaks down the high court judgment and recaps what the case was about.
'Cannot sacrifice procedural safeguards'
The high court said that while terrorism posed an ominous threat to national security and every legitimate weapon in the armoury must be deployed against it, civil democratic society can ill-afford sacrificing the procedural safeguards legislatively provided for them at the altar of perceived peril to national security.
Any aberration of such safeguards would only be counterproductive, the Court further observed and added that "empirical evidence suggests that departure from the due process of law fosters an ecosystem in which terrorism burgeons and provides fodder to vested interests whose singular agenda is to propagate false narratives".
In a strongly worded judgment, the bench observed that "the Siren Song that the end justifies the means, and that the procedural safeguards are subservient to the overwhelming need to ensure that the accused is prosecuted and punished, must be muzzled by the voice of Rule of Law."
The high court said it could not accept the prosecution's request to obtain proper sanction and try Saibaba again because the rule of double jeopardy applied. An alleged crime once tried cannot be tried again.
Who is GN Saibaba and what was the case against him?
Born in Andhra Pradesh's Amalapuram district, 55-year-old Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba, more commonly known as GN Saibaba, hailed from a poor peasant family. Afflicted with polio when he was five years old, Saibaba's primarily crawled to get to places.
He got his first wheelchair in 2003 when he came to Delhi. Saibaba, who had only 10 per cent mobility, suffered from various ailments. In May 2022, Saibaba went on a four-day hunger strike in protest against the CCTV camera that allegedly recorded him in his prison cell all day long. His incarceration in the "anda cell" or solitary confinement exacerbated Saibaba medical issues. Saibaba has acute pain in both his hands and his left hand is on the verge of failure. Saibaba is also plagued with pancreatitis, high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy, chronic back pain, immobility, and sleeplessness.
A stellar student, Saibaba's education was possible because of scholarships. Saibaba graduated from Amalapuram's Sree Konaseema Bhanoji Ramars (SKBR) College, where he came out at the top of the university. He went on to get his MA in English from Hyderabad University and a PhD from Delhi University. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "Indian Writing in English and Nation Making: Reading the Discipline".
Saibaba's political activism began with the Radical Students' Union while he was studying for his MA-MPhil. Saibaba was also associated with the All India People's Resistance Forum (AIPRF), where he spoke out in support of Kashmir's liberation and campaigned for the Dalits and the Adivasis. The AIPRF later evolved into the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) accused of being a Maoist front. The Andhra Pradesh government banned RDF in 2012 for alleged subversive activities.
In 2009, Saibaba was a fierce critic of the Centre's November 2009 Operation Green Hunt (OGH) which was created to tackle Maoists insurgency.
Saibaba taught English at Delhi University's Ram Lal Anand College until his arrest in May 2014. In March 2021, five years after his conviction, Saibaba's family received a termination letter.
In 2014, Maharashtra Police arrested Saibaba on an alleged tipoff given by Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Hem Keshavdatta Mishra who alleged that he was acting as a courier between the professor and Maoists holed up in the forests of Chhattisgarh.
Authorities said he was the "urban contact" for the Maoists. The prosecution alleged that Saibaba introduced his co-accused to the banned CPI (Maoist) through fronts like the RDF. The prosecution had submitted that banned literature and other anti-national material were also seized from Saibaba.
