Welcoming the Bombay High Court’s acquittal of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba, as well as Hem Mishra, Mahesh Tirki, Pandu Narote, Prashant Rahi, and Vijay Tirki, the Committee for Defence and Release of GN Saibaba appealed to the Supreme Court to reject the appeal filed by the Maharashtra government against their release. Saibaba and five others were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) allegedly for being members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
In a statement issued on Sunday, March 10, the Committee asked the Delhi University to reinstate Saibaba with retrospective benefits and compensation.
“Saibaba, Hem Mishra, Prashant Rahi, Mahesh Tirki, Vijay Tirki, and the family of the late Pandu Narote should be granted compensation for the years-long wrongful incarceration and loss of life of Pandu Narote under detention,” the Committee said.
They also asked the government to repeal the draconian UAPA law. “All charges against intellectuals and activists who have been similarly falsely detained under the UAPA in particular, such as those charged in the Bhima-Koregaon case, or those arrested during the anti-CAA/NRC struggle, should be dropped and they should be immediately released. The lakhs of the poor and voiceless who languish in jails simply because they are considered inconvenient to political and corporate agendas should be released immediately,” the Committee said.
Earlier, on March 5, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court had acquitted Saibaba and others who were accused of having Maoist links. They were arrested in 2014. Three years later, in 2017, the Gadchiroli trial court convicted the six accused. While Saibaba and five others were sentenced to life, Vijay Tikri was given a 10-year sentence. The accused in the case have been imprisoned for nearly 10 years. Among the accused, Pandu Narote died in prison while awaiting the verdict.
In its judgement, the Bombay High Court after examining the witness statements and the electronic evidence submitted by the police, said that the prosecution had failed to make a credible case.
“Though a great deal of electronic evidence is produced … no evidence has been led by any witness identifying the various persons in these videos, or deposing as to the specific statements made by such persons and quoting them, or how these statements or actions in videos constitute material to make out an offence under [UAPA]. Playing several videos or requesting the Court to read through hundreds of pages of literature does not constitute evidence. In our opinion, there should have been specific evidence led through witnesses to connect with the making out of an offence. In the absence of any depositions to this effect, we are afraid we cannot consider all this footage to be evidence,” the court had said.
The High Court had said that the trial court’s judgement, which convicted all the six accused under terrorism charges, amounted to “failure of justice.”
“In our view, there is total non-compliance of various provisions of UAPA. The sanction accorded to prosecute Accused Nos.1 to 5 is invalid. Taking cognizance by the trial court without valid sanction or no sanction to prosecute accused No.6 G.N. Saibaba goes to the root of the case, which renders the entire proceedings null and void … We hold that the trial held despite violation of mandatory provisions of law itself amounts to failure of justice,” the court had said.