Life sentence to Professor Saibaba under UAPA

The wheelchair-bound academic was arrested in May 2014. He and five others were convicted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The court  found JNU student Hem Mishra and four others guilty of waging war against the country and supporting the ideology of the banned organisation, CPI (Maoist).

Delhi University professor GN Saibaba

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Saibaba was picked up from his house in Delhi in 2013.
  • This after 3 were nabbed and incriminating papers on a banned outfit were seized.
  • Saibaba is a wheel-chair-bound teacher with 90 per cent physical disability.

Delhi University professor GN Saibaba has been given life sentence by a court in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli for his links with the Maoists. The court has also found JNU student Hem Mishra and four others guilty of waging war against the country and supporting the ideology of the banned organisation, CPI (Maoist). Judge Suryakant Shinde sentenced Saibaba, Mishra and three others to life while sixth person Vijay Tirke was sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

Saibaba was picked up from his house in Delhi in 2013 after Mishra and two others were caught with some incriminating letters and a memory card which contained, according to police, incriminating documents about the banned organisation.

 

The search at Saibaba’s house yielded more of the same materials after which he was put in jail with others.

He later managed to get bail on health grounds. Saibaba, a wheel-chair-bound teacher with 90 per cent physical disability, was first arrested by Maharashtra Police in May 2014, on charges of having links with Maoists.

 

THE BACKGROUND

The prosecutions story was that Hem Mishra, Mahesh Tirki and Pandu Narote had gone inside the jungles and met wanted accused Narmada Akka, a top Maoist commander in the Gadchiroli area and from her they collected Rs 5 lakh that was to be delivered to Saibaba in Delhi to spread the Maoist ideology in the urban setting.

Public prosecutor Prashant Satgianathan had brought in 23 witnesses and 41 articles including about 3 TB of data contained in hard disks recovered from Saibaba’s residence.

According to Satgianathan in 2012 there was a conference of Revolutionary Democratic Front (a front organisation of the Maoists which is banned in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh) in which Saibaba had participated. “Saibaba was the deputy joint secretary and there is a speech of him in which he said, “Naxalism is the only way and denounces the democratic government setup. All these videos were played out in the court,” the public prosecutor.

According to prosecution, Saibaba had been in touch with Maoists from various countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/du-professor-saibaba-maoist-links-cpi-maoist-gadchiroli-maharashtra-police/1/898705.html