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G. N. Saibaba's Bail Cancelled, Contempt Notice Slapped On Arundhati Roy

By Countercurrents.org

24 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org

The Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court cancelled the bail of Delhi University professor G. N. Saibaba and asked him to surrender before the police by 25th December. The Wheelchair-bound Saibaba who is over 90% disabled will celebrate Christmas in jail. A single judge bench of Justice Arun Choudhari also charged Author Arundhati Roy for criminal contempt for writing about Saibaba's imprisonment and the court's denial of bail in her article “Professor P.O.W.” in Outlook magazine in May. Arundhati Roy has to reply to the notice by January 25, 2016.

Prof. Saibaba was arrested by Maharashtra police in May 2015 for alleged Maoist links. On July 3, a two-judge bench of the Bombay High Court at Mumbai had granted Saibaba bail on reports that his health was deteriorated severely after 14 months in Nagpur jail. He has been paralysed from waist-downward since contracting polio in childhood. Since obtaining bail in July, Saibaba has been undergoing treatment at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in New Delhi. He had an angioplasty in August.

The order canceling Saibaba's bail says that there is sufficient material for the court to consider that the allegations made against Saibaba under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act as true and thus, to cancel his bail order. It states that the Revolutionary Democratic Front of which Saibaba is a member, though not banned by the central government, “could be called as frontal organization of the CPI (Maoist)”.

The order cites several pages of Roy's article and notes that the article had a “mala fide motive to interfere in the administration of justice”.

“Instead of challenging the orders passed by Sessions Court and the learned Single Judge of this Court, the author appears to have invented a novel idea of bashing the Central Government, the State Government, the Police machinery so also judiciary and that was, prima facie, with a mala fide motive to interfere in the administration of justice.

The language used by the author in her article against the Government and the police machinery is as nasty as it could be and one really wonders whether the same would befit to the prestigious awards the author is said to have won. Calling the Government and police as being “afraid” of the applicant, “abductor” and “thief” and the Magistrate from a “small town”, demonstrate the surly, rude and boorish attitude of the author in the most tolerant country like India...

...The author has even gone to the extent of scandalizing and questioning the credibility of the higher judiciary by giving examples of the orders of bail granted to “Babu Bajrangi”, “Maya Kodnani” and “Amit Shah”.

Does the author know that the grant of bail depends on the facts and evidence in each case and there cannot be any such comparison. Is it not the fact that the Central Government, the State Government, the police machinery and the armed forces are fighting for prevention of unlawful and terrorist activities in the country when the Naxal plague has taken a pincer grip.”

Arundhati Roy said she will respond to the order in court.



 



 

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