Last week, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court refused to extend bail to Delhi University Professor G.N. Saibaba, who has been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for alleged links with Maoists. The judge also issued a notice of criminal contempt to activist-writer Arundhati Roy, who, in an article published in May this year, had questioned the court’s delay in granting Saibaba bail. In both cases, the court acted harshly, and should have taken a more considered view.
The association of Saibaba — who suffers from 90 per cent physical disability due to post-polio paralysis and has already spent more than a year in jail — with the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), a body that subscribes to Maoism, has been held up as evidence of his association with Maoists. In the 2011 Sri Indra Das vs State of Assam case, the Supreme Court observed that mere membership of a banned organisation is no reason to arrest or jail a person. It cited several judgments by the US Supreme Court to support its position and held that “mere membership of a banned organisation cannot incriminate a person unless he is proved to have resorted to acts of violence or incited people to imminent violence, or does an act intended to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to imminent violence”. The high court’s approach towards Saibaba’s bail plea appears excessively stern, even unreasonable, against the backdrop of the apex court’s reading of the law earlier.
