GYANOPROBHA

REPORT ON DR. BINAYAK SEN'S TRIAL

Friends of Binayak have been attending his trial. Here is a report from Dr. Sridhar of the Medico-Friends Circle.

Three days of hearings concluded today. Anant, Raman and I attended.

A stream of witnesses deposed, mostly police officers and jail officials. As unsubstantial as earlier ones, and many of them not directly involving Binayak. The most relevant were officials who deposed about the visits that Binayak made to the jail to visit Narayan Sanyal, the alleged Maoist leader. The attempt was to show that Binayak had visited him as a "relative" to "discuss family matters", citing the visitor's book at the jail. It was also alleged that during one of these visits a certain "incriminating" letter was passed on by the accused to Binayak. It was brought out by cross-examination that the visitors' book was routinely maintained by one of the jail inmates, and not by the deposing official, and all of Binayak's applications, signed as "Gen Sec, PUCL, Chhattisgarh" were placed as exhibits. The official also denied any possibility of any letter having been leaked out of the jail during his charge, and admitted that his earlier contention that any letter must have been let out when he was looking elsewhere was merely speculative. Were the matter not so serious, one could be forgiven for believing that it was a hilarious comedy show. [Emphasis added - GP]

About 47 witnesses have been examined to date, of the original 80-odd, not counting those related to the supplemental chargesheet. Dates for hearings have been fixed until June. Raman and Anant have them, and will post them soon.

Binayak looked well, smiling calmly through the dreary proceedings. He was curious about the mfc meet and about numerous public matters. He has sent his love and best wishes to all of you. He gets mail regularly from all over the world, and am sure he would love to hear from each of us. Please do write to him at the Raipur Jail address, and send him stuff he can read. (Does he get the bulletin, I wonder?)

And please volunteer to attend the hearings as soon as the dates are posted. Local arrangements for stay can be made at affordable rates - also being organized. You must not miss the honor of being mentioned in the court visitors' book, and experiencing the warmth of the policemen guarding the "dreaded terrorist".

Sridhar

The theatre continues.

Meanwhile, here is a poem in Urdu/Hindi about Binayak, being recited by Rizvi Amir Abbas Syed, the poet himself:

IS CHHATTISGARH FEELING MORE SECURE WITH DR. BINAYAK SEN IN JAIL?

The Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram has been visiting Raipur. When Binayak's wife Ilina paid him a visit recently, he was sympathetic to her plight but pleaded inability to do anything to hasten his release.

As might be expected, he has come out strongly against maoist extremism and violence. "Squarely, boldly, firmly and decisively we have to deal with Left wing extremism. There will be some damage to civilian lives during confrontation, but we have to minimize it," the minister is reported to have declared to journalists.

So is Dr. Binayak Sen one of those "civilian lives" that have been damaged in the confrontation? What about his family? His patients? The lives he could have saved?

And how does Chidambaram wish to minimize the damage in their case? Or has he written Binayak off in the cost-benefit calculation in the so-called "war against terror"? Is his continued imprisonment bringing greater security to the people of Chhattisgarh?

If the government wants to demonstrate that they can be tough on terrorists and still be fair in their administration of justice, it needs to release Binayak - and all other undertrials against whom a case has not been established - on bail. The trial has so far failed to establish his guilt, and so under normal principles of justice, he must be presumed to be innocent. What reason is there to suspend this presumption of innocence in his case?

Without this demonstration of justice, there is no assurance that the system can be anything other than what it is already widely perceived to be: corrupt and unfair.

Laws against terrorism that harm the innocent undermine the legitimacy of the state by allowing it to act with impunity. How does this make the non-terrorist population more secure? That is why they need proper safeguards against state abuse. Where are these safeguards in my brother's case?

It is in this spirit that Vinay Sitapati again argues:

"...the high court, Supreme Court and NHRC all seem reluctant to play spoiler in a long drawn war against a dangerous enemy. To them, Binayak Sen is a war casualty: an enemy combatant at worst, collateral damage at best. Sen’s incarceration is a political question whose answer is best left to the judgment of the state executive. It would be deemed unpatriotic to do otherwise.

Binayak Sen is only one of 192 charged under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act; the Act only one of a slew of Indian anti-terror laws; and Naxalism only one (though perhaps most dangerous) of India’s million mutinies. But Binayak Sen symbolises a larger point: tough times may need tough responses, but require tough monitoring as well. Just as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo battered America’s sense of self more than Osama Bin Laden ever thought conceivable, misusing laws destroys the very ideals for which we battle against Al Qaeda and Naxalites. Institutional acquiescence of the “war on terror” did America great disservice. Will we too tell ourselves a generation later: that when faced with a good fight, we fought it the wrong way. And lost."

GOVERNANCE IN INDIA - HARRASSMENT OF CRITICS OF THE RULING PARTY

The letter below from a retired judge in Karnataka to a senior police official narrates a flagrant example of the kind of governance for which Indian state governments have become notorious.

Supporters of the ruling BJP in Karnataka may well claim that one instance does not prove a trend. But when certificates of good governance are being showered on one particularly notorious BJP Chief Minister by Anil Ambani, Ratan Tata and Lakshmi Mittal, one has to wonder whether one is watching a re-play of the accolades heaped on the hapless Chandra Babu Naidu just before he was trounced in the general elections in 2004. Those who have not surrendered completely to short term amnesia will recall that Naidu was voted the Best Performing Chief Minister by the Shining India enthusiasts in the media and industry in 2004, immediately before the elections.

But where can one turn for better examples? There are similar examples of the harrassment of journalists in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, where the Congress is in power. The BSP, where Mayawati has been accumulated tens of millions of rupees since her rise in politics as a representative of the oppressed, and where her supporters have recently killed a state employed engineer who refused to part with cash for her birthday bash? The CPM in West Bengal, which has turned election rigging into an art form and managed to remain in power for the last 31 years, while its politicians have fattened themselves at public expense beyond their wildest dreams as representatives of the oppressed labouring classes?

Here - thanks to John Dayal -  is the complaint made by retired Justice M F Saldanha on behalf of B V Seetaram to the Inspector General of Police in Managalore, Karnataka, narrating the circumstances of the journalist's arrest in more detail. As the video clip shows, Mr Seetaram is a well-known journalist whose "crime" was to have criticized the RSS - one of the family of organizations associated with the ruling Hindu nationalist right wing party - in one of his papers

The Inspector General of Police
Western Range
Mangalore

This is to record the shocking and savage, not to mention absolutely brutal treatment, accorded to Shri BV Seetaram, Editor of Karavali Ale and four other publications by the Police Dept. This case will be taken up through the Courts, through the respective Governments at the State and at the Centre, the National and International Human Rights Tribunals, the Press Council of India and such other Forums as is required. Never in the history of any country, not even in dictatorships has an Editor being handcuffed, chained, and been escorted by four heavily armed policemen, four police officers and 25 police constables when produced in Court. Not even the most dangerous and violent criminals have been publicly portrayed in this manner for which Transparency International will claim exemplary damages quantified at Rs. 10 Crores from the State Government.

The Home Minister of the State who has turned a deaf ear to every communication pointing out that there has been a total and complete breakdown of the law and order situation in the districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi and who has encouraged and protected the police officers who have been responsible for this state of affairs, will have to accept the personal responsibility for the incidents in question. From what is recorded below , it is very clear that everything that has happened was preplanned and executed in keeping with instructions that came directly from the State Home Ministry. On every single occasion where there has been gross police inaction or execuses, attacks on minorities and targeting of citizens, the subordinate police officers have openly admitted that they have been carrying out the instructions given to them from this quarter.

On the evening of Sunday 4th January B.V. Seetaram and his wife were proceeding from a temple towards Kundapur in their car. All of a sudden six police vans with about a dozen officers and over 30 armed police intercepted the car. Seetaram was told that he is under arrest and when he asked to be shown the warrant he was roughly told that there is no need for a warrant. What your department overlooks is that everything that had transpired there was overheard by me over Seetaram's mobile phone as he had phoned me in panic, I tried to speak to the Police officers who squarely abused me! What transpired thereafter has also been similarly communicated by Seetharam to me and to several others because your brilliant officers forgot to take away his mobile! At one point, Seetaram's car was escorted to some lonely roads and it is very clear that the plan was to stage a fake encounter and kill both of them. The only problem for the police was that there was continuous passing traffic and after trying several areas for about two hours the encounter plan was postponed.

This incident is extremely serious because it is very clear that the police department was acting according to a plan from the highest quarters as otherwise six police vans and over 30 armed police could not have converged at that spot. The police are trying to put out the version they were asked to execute a non-bailable warrant in a petty defamation case relating to the year 2006. Such execution would have taken place at Seetram's residence or office both of which are in Mangalore and not on a public road in an obscure part of Udupi District which incidentally is the home town of the Home Minister Dr. Acharya and of his Doctor son..After several hours the Police produced an old Warrant in a petty Defamation case, and arrested Seetaram though he volunteered to attend the Police Station and the Court the next morning. What was the desperate urgency that night, in a case of the year 2006? Why was an objection raised for grant of Bail- Seetharam,s wife had told the Police that he is a patient of chronic Diabetes. Did the Police want him to die in the lock-up? We will get the answers to these questions in the Court room. Ultimately Seetaram landed in hospital, else the Police would have killed him in keeping with their plan.

On the morning of 5th January 2009 Seetaram was virtually dragged out from the hospital. He was handcuffed in the hospital itself and then chained and dragged to a police van in the presence of a crowd of over 2000 people. Four heavily armed policemen escorted him as though he was a violent criminal or a dreaded terrorist. He was paraded from the public road through the Court premises to the Court room by an army of 4 police officers and 25 constables. The Court in its entire history has never witnessed such a spectacle that was arranged by the State Government in the home district of its Home Minister Dr. Acharya. Seetaram's lawyer raised a very strong objection that he is the Editor of five well known publications and a law abiding citizen and that the police were deliberately torturing and humiliating him. Citing a Supreme Court decision his lawyer pointed out that there is serious infringement of human rights and that the handcuffs and chains must be removed. The police officer present told the Magistrate that he is a dangerous criminal and that the police have registered another 5 cases against him and that even if he was released on bail the next police officer from the Bajpe Police Station would arrest him on the spot since the Mangalore SEZ officers had lodged some complaint in respect of some other articles.

Though Seetaram was offered bail on a personal bond he told the court that he is not availing of it for the following reasons :

(a) That having regard to the dangerous situation created by the police and the State Government his life was in danger .
(b) That the police had already tried a fake encounter the previous evening and that they would not stop at their attempts to kill him even in the lock-up or in the jail.
(c) That his health was precarious and he required hospitalization.

The Court then remanded him to judicial custody and directed that he be kept in hospital with appropriate security.

There is a rule of law in this country and since the law and order situation in these two districts has totally and completely broken down we shall insist that the Home Ministry of the Central Government takes corrective action even if necessary by deploying central forces to these two districts. The situation prevailing in these two districts is far worse than Khandamal in Orissa even at the height of the atrocities there. This is virtual state terrorism.

According to the statements made in the Court room your department has registered 5 offences against Seetaram in relation to one and the same Article published a long time back on the ground that it has disrupted communal harmony. Please immediately make available the list of offences registered by the police department against Seetaram and other members of his staff and above all at whose instance this is being done. There have been four attacks on his office and residence by anti-social elements during the last three months 113 incidents wherein the newspaper bundles have been burnt and 87 attacks on newspaper vendors. Though the police refuse to register complaints generally, 23 of the offences have been registered at different places but the incidents have only increased thereafter culminating in the present attack on Seetaram. The Press and the media are not likely to take these incidents lightly as they undermine the very constitutional process and the basis of democracy.

Sd/- Justice M.F. Saldanha (Retd.)
Chairman.

GOVERNANCE IN INDIA - CRIMINALS OUT ON BAIL, BINAYAK SEN REMAINS IN JAIL

In a comment on the state of governance in India, Sherna Gandhy, a senior journalist based in Pune, writes:

Complacent public

After the terror attacks in Mumbai, mass opinion was against politicians. The slogan "enough is enough" resonated the city. But barely a month later Sanjay Dutt who was arrested for having connections to the bomb blasts in Mumbai 15 years ago is being considered for nomination as an MP from Lucknow.

The Congress Party too has selected Baba Bodke who has a criminal record as a candidate. Both Dutt and Bodke are out on bail. But Dr Binayak Sen, a social worker, has been languishing in jail without bail for last 19 months. He was booked for 'aiding' Naxalites - a crime that he apparently did not commit.

So, what politics and what justice are we talking about? When is 'enough' really 'enough' for India's complacent and ineffective public and media?

Kuldip Nayar makes a similar point in an extended commentary on governance in India:

Criminals constitute one fifth of the total strength in both parliament and state assemblies. One criminal was brought to the House last year to vote for the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) which was facing a no-confidence motion. The rules are such that a candidate or an elected member is not disqualified until he or she is convicted. That may be the reason why a horde of criminals is getting ready to contest the Lok Sabha elections, scheduled to be held in the next three months. Corruption knows no bounds and the nexus between politicians and the dishonest is firmer than before.

The latest Rs70,000 million scandal in IT firm Satyam is partly the fallout of land contracts and other deals which the Andhra Pradesh government has given it. Two sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh also benefitted and have been transferred to a company close to the apprehended owner B. Ramalinga Raju.

One state chief minister who has been repeatedly accused of corruption is Uttar Pradesh's Mayawati, a dalit leader. She is already facing the charge of accumulating disproportionate assets. Only a week ago her MLA killed an engineer for refusing to fudge figures to give him money for Bahujan Samaj Party that she heads. She is reportedly converting black money into white through donations during her birthday celebrations.

Justice, figuring at the top of the preamble of the Constitution, is distant from people. When there are millions of cases pending in law courts - many for more than a decade - justice is almost denied. The judges are not even above board. A former Chief Justice of India has said 15 per cent of the judiciary is corrupt. Serving Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan has disclosed that he is getting more and more complaints of judges taking bribes. Investigation agencies are already processing a few cases in which a Supreme Court judge is involved.

A retired Chief Justice of India, when asked by his colleagues to face an inquiry, has kept quiet. His sons used the official residence for their property business. The government has expressed its helplessness in the case. He should personally volunteer a probe to save the judiciary from ignominy. The process of impeachment is so cumbersome that the government is considering an amendment to the Constitution. The earlier proposal to set up a National Judicial Commission would have laid down a concrete procedure to deal with dishonest judges. But the Supreme Court does not favour such a body.

Justice also means "social justice". The Supreme Court has spelled it out to mean elimination of inequality of income and status and standards of life, and to provide a decent standard of life to the working people (Nakara Vs Union of India). Yet the fact remains that two-thirds of India's one billion population lives in poverty and one fourth goes without food at night. The fin-ancial meltdown has pulled the lower half still further downwards. Even the verdict on social justice has not in any way decreased the distance between the rich, cited in Forbes as the wealthiest in the world, and the poor who wallow in denial and drudgery of nothingness.

Referring directly to Dr. Binayak Sen, he adds:

The ruling UPA government has brought back the Prevention Of Terrorism Act (POTA) through the backdoor. The Vajpayee government had framed the law to detain the critics without trial. Home Minister P. Chidambaram promised a 'fair balance' between human rights and tough laws. He should prove it by precedent. Dr Binayak Sen, a member of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, has been under detention for 19 months. He should be released immediately. He is a practising doctor, detained on the ground that he was carrying messages of Naxalites to their sympathisers. Even if this is true, the crime is that of ideological difference.[Emphasis added]

[It is with the last statement that I have a problem. This is the kind of defence Dr. Sen can do without. Firstly, because it is not true, since the evidence and witnesses have not substantiated such a charge. Secondly, if true, the act would have been a crime under the existing laws, especially as long as the naxalites refuse to acknowledge the Constitution and operate within the laws of the country.]

Antara Dev Sen asks how the increased co-ordination between the state and the centre required to deal with external and internal terrorism can be achieved when states are allowed to get away with judicial abuse of the kind that Dr. Binayak Sen's case exemplifies. The answer may lie in the newly created National Investigation Agency, but will it be capable of investigating how Dr. Binayak Sen's case has remained unresolved for 19 months despite none of the evidence supporting the charges so far?

In a strange and rare case, two men who were arrested on charges of being Al Badr terrorists appealed to the CBI for an investigation. The CBI concluded that the men were innocent and has asked for action against police officers of the Delhi Anti-Terrorist Squad responsible for their arrest and harrassment. The CBI also revealed that the men were in fact intelligence operatives.

How far are we from becoming a banana republic? The fact is that strengthening the four PARTs of democratic governance - Participation of ordinary people in public life; Accountability of elected officials, Responsiveness of government executives and departments to the citizens they serve (as opposed to rule), and Transparency of government processes - is among the most effective ways that people can develop a stake in the system. And as Sen argues in her article, only by ensuring better governance can terrorism be beaten in the long term.

THE INDIAN EXPRESS ON DR. BINAYAK SEN

In a series of three articles (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) in The Indian Express, Vinay Sitapati raises important questions about the continuing trial of Dr. Binayak Sen on charges that the former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee has termed illegal, and that Binayak's lawyer Rajeev Dhawan has termed "the single biggest blot on freedom for bail that we have seen in a while".

The first one to have highlighted the flaky nature of the evidence that the prosecution had brought to bear upon the case was Saikat Datta at Outlook India, in an article in December 2007, soon after the refusal of his bail plea by the Supreme Court. Another article that focused on the legal aspects appeared in Tehelka, and was written by Shoma Chaudhury. But Sitapati has been the first mainstream media writer to have shown in detail how the case against him is very dubious.

In an interview with Karan Thapar Binayak's wife Dr. Ilina Sen mentioned an incident that clearly showed how the prosecution shamelessly tries to introduce fake evidence, but I don't know if this was noted by the court or whether the judge passed any strictures against such an attempt. I do know that at one point, the defence lawyers protested by saying that this trial may as well be conducted by the police, for all the even-handedness being shown by the judge.

I cannot help gaining the impression from my distance that the independence of the judiciary is a fiction behind which the executive seeks to hide its attempts to influence it all the time. Thank goodness for a relatively free and vigilant press! Otherwise we might have become close to becoming a banana republic where it's too dangerous ask: Isn't it the state itself which is largely in contempt of the law in a case like Binayak's?

As I have noted earlier, the statements by Raman Singh and Ravi Shankar Prasad appearing in the first article by Sitapati seem to indicate that a decision may have been taken by the BJP in Chhattisgarh on political grounds not to release Binayak, but to keep him in jail for as long as possible. They are all using the judicial process to prolong the trial to the maximum extent, perhaps even to secure a guilty verdict.

Of course the case needs to be fought in the courts. But his entitlement to bail, which is supposed to be independent of his alleged guilt (as Sitapati has argued), is now being denied by the state on the basis of a presumption of guilt. Apart from the cases Sitapati cites of people being released on bail during their criminal trials, there is also the much less publicized case of traders implicated in a case of supporting maoists in Chhattisgarh under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act being released before the elections. In my brother's case, the refusal of bail is effectively acting as a sentence of indefinite incarceration. So where is the recourse to justice that all of us are entitled to by the Constitution?

My family and I are at our wits' end to know what to do, and where to turn. It strikes me that the only way to get justice is to seek to publicize his case as much as possible so that public opinion puts some pressure on the BJP to at least release him on bail and even perhaps drop the charges against him. This is an election year, and they may be sensitive to the risk of being seen as being intolerant of people like my brother. Their losses in Rajasthan and Delhi in the recent elections may sensitize the leadership of the BJP somewhat to accusations of abuse of human rights. This is why I regard Sitapati's articles as so valuable.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder to what extent politicians (and the elites in whose service they always stand ready) are sensitive to public opinion. As Sitapati himself has pointed out elsewhere, the BJP are so closely connected to their extremist fringes that they may be incapable of making distinctions - in practice if not also intellectually - between being anti-Salwa Judum and being a maoist terrorist. The success of Narendra Modi in securing the Chief Ministership of Gujarat seems to have given him a cachet out of all proportion to the quality of governance and justice that is actually available to ordinary people in Gujarat. The ignominy that should have been his due after the riots of  2002 has been erased by his electoral success.

The lesson that the BJP and perhaps even other politicians seem to have drawn from this is that Muslim baiting pays dividends, and in my brother's case, anyone who can be tarnished as a maoist sympathiser is fair game. If popular anger at maoist and jihadi violence can somehow be directed at figures like Afzal Guru or Binayak Sen, then perhaps they can ignore the accountability for governance and justice and quality of life that elections are meant to provide.

The popular anger that politicians sensed right after the Mumbai outrage was directed at their ineffectiveness in tackling terrorism. In such circumstances, it is difficult for politicians - in a hurry to make up to the public for their previous callousness - to moderate the desire for security with that of justice, as Manmohan Singh has pleaded. It is much easier to pass tougher and more draconian laws to show that the politicians have responded. Unless we are extremely careful, we may, in the process of protecting our national security, as we undoubtedly should, slide quickly towards becoming a banana republic where torture (already alarmingly well tolerated by Indian public opinion) and imprisonment without trial, mistrials, and high incarceration rates will all become frighteningly common, and where constitutional safeguards will be widely violated in the name of national security. Venality and corruption will prevent any justice for the innocent.

That is why the warning contained in the Indian Express articles and the editorial yesterday needs to be heeded urgently: "when the the law is made tighter, there must be attendant thought to the possibility of misuse. Tough times need, not just tough responses, but tough monitoring as well." As previous historical experience repeatedly shows, without relentless vigilance to the possibility of abuse, the state will end up behaving pretty much like the terrorists they are supposed to be protecting us against. 

GREETINGS FROM DR. BINAYAK SEN

The following message from Binayak was transcribed by his wife Dr. Ilina Sen and sent to friends in the Medico-Friends Circle and Jana Swasthya Sahyog

My warmest greetings to all friends in the MFC, and best wishes for 2009.

As an Indian child of parents from the territory that is now Bangladesh, displacement was a lived reality for me  from my childhood, as it was  for millions of other children of my generation. But then, in so many ways, the history of the last 500 years (1492 is a useful reference date), is the history of successive waves of displacement- either as displacement from, as in the case of the native Americans, or displacement to, as in the case of slave labour from Africa or India. A particularly gruesome episode is being played out  before our eyes in Palestine. The NBA brought  the issue of displacement into the mainstream of Indian public discourse. in Chhattisgarh, seasonal migration provides an example of large scale displacement, and a particularly iconic experience was watching a young migrant mother  lying on the floor of a train while her  baby slowly dehydrated  from gastroenteritis. The Salwa Judum in  Bastar has displaced huge numbers of people at gunpoint, and over 100,000 people have been pushed  over the border into Andhra Pradesh. 

In China today, 100 million people are in the process of being displaced by the  Three Gorges Dam and other projects. As usual, in India, we go one better.The redoubtable Prof Swaminathan has chaired a committee  that has concluded that Indian agriculture can accommodate at most a third of its population in agriculture, as opposed to half as at present.. The difference is a small matter of 200 million people.

Displacement is about the sequestration of privileged access  to resources and need not always involve a geographical  reference. Thus, the chronic  nutritional deprivation from which half our children and a third of our adults suffer  can be regarded as a special form of displacement. What displacement invariably does entail  is the ruthless cutting  short of the micro evolutionary process involved in any instance of  eco-adaptation, involving chemical or physical factors as in Bhopal, or the social environment as in south Bastar. 

That'a enough. Too bad I can't take part. All the best for your deliberations.. Choose your  politics before your politics chooses you.

                                                                                               

A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE FOR DR. BINAYAK SEN

Normally, a system of justice is expected to deliver justice, even when the state has failed to deliver it in its governance. But where is the recourse to justice when the the entire paraphernalia of courts, laws and lawyers seem unable to deliver it? There is none.

It then becomes the task - or should do, in a country with claims to being a democracy with a free press - for public opinion to highlight the travesty of justice, and to shame the state into delivering it. The recent spate of articles - Karan Thapar's piece in the Indian Express (see list of articles under Dr. Binayak Sen on the left), the appeal from Khushwant Singh, the grand dad of Indian journalism (see below), and today's analysis by Vinay Sitapati in the Indian Express - all attest to the fact that a grave injustice is being committed here. They do not take over the function of the courts, but all carry either explicit or implicit appeals to the courts to do their job, without being influenced by the executive, and with due application of mind and attention to the spirit of the law.

Sitapati's article (the first of three parts) in the Indian Express is particularly strong at highlighting the flagrant miscarriage of justice that Binayak's continued denial of bail represents. The Supreme Court's refusal to grant bail has effectively acted as a sentence of indefinite incarceration, since the state is apparently left free to concoct one charge sheet after another, while prosecution witnesses collapse in disarray, and ham-handed attempts to insert fake evidence remain unreported in the media and unremarked by the court. Notice also from Ravi Shankar Prasad's remarks how the BJP government is attempting to turn an electoral victory into a confirmation of Binayak's alleged guilt.

The Supreme Court refuses Binayak bail on the basis of lies by the police, while a BJP lawyer dismisses an appeal for his release on the basis of electoral victory. This is justice in shining India.

And here is Khushwant Singh's appeal:

Let this man go

If you can’t remember who he is, let me jog your memory — and your conscience. He is the product of the Christian Medical College, Vellore where he was given the Paul Harrison Award in 2004 for being the most outstanding student. He could have set up a lucrative practice in any city.

However, he chose to train villagers in rural centres in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh, largely inhabited by tribals suffering from malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis. He and his wife Iliana have been doing so for the last 30 years based in village Rasulia. He is the first Asian to be honoured by the Jonathan Mann Award in 2008 for his work in health and human rights.

He did not care to distinguish between ailing villagers on the basis of their political allegiances: Naxalites or Salwa Judum. If they were sick they had to be healed.

His clinic is named after Indira Gandhi. He was arrested on charges of treason for siding with the Naxalites. He has been in jail for 18 months. His bail application has been rejected. More than 20 Nobel Prize winners have appealed to our president to intervene on his behalf.

Dr Binayak Sen continues to languish in jail. It is a slap on the face of Bharat Mata. Raise your voice against the miscarriage of justice: Write to the president, prime minister, home minister, L.K. Advani or Rajnath Singh (Chattisgarh is ruled by the BJP) to release him and allow him to resume his noble mission in life.

The irony of the last sentence is that the names he mentions are leaders of the very party that seems to have taken a decision NOT to release Binayak.  This is apparent from the remarks by Raman Singh and  Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted by Sitapati. I suppose this means they intend to let "justice" take its own course. I will not be surprised if a political calculation has already been made that will keep him in prison indefinitely. With the BJP electoral victory in Chhattisgarh, and the general climate of opinion post-Mumbai, the BJP may have decided for now that releasing Binayak would send a signal of being soft on terrorism, even if it is obvious that Binayak is not connected with terrorism at all. This means that the only hope now lies in changing the climate of opinion so that the BJP feels it's not risking too much by releasing him. This can only be done by a more active media and by greater publicity for his cause.

A QUICK TRIP DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE

Just a quick reminder of who exactly broke the cease fire maintained by the Hamas (the same one that wants the destruction of Israel) And here is the amiable and agile Mark Regev in action in Channel 4, fending off inconvenient questions about the purity of arms of the Israeli military.

DESTINED FOR THE MEMORY HOLE?

Along with Sai Reddy, Prashant Rahi, Dr. Binayak Sen too seems destined for the memory hole. Post-Mumbai India seems headed down the road of locking up its conscience keepers and throwing away the key. Which is why we have to be grateful that after a long gap, the media seem to have remembered Dr. Binayak Sen again.

If Nandan Nilekani says that reforms should first benefit the poor, he is rightly treated with deference and respect as a font of wisdom. If you have, like Binayak, spent thirty years working among the poor, and say the same thing, you are treated as a seditious terrorist.

What this report fails to note is that many of the 83 prosecution witnesses for the first round of charges failed to turn up. Those that did, turned hostile. None of the evidence that was brought before the court proved of any use in sustaining the charges.

If - as is often claimed by the patriotic crowd on the internet - there were a proper justice system in this country, would this alone not have been good enough grounds for dismissing the case against Binayak? Yet the state of Chhattisgarh has now brought a second round of charges.

So this what is meant by saying "let the law takes its course". A doctor who spent 30 years of his working life working to improve standards of community health and fighting for the right to food and treatment according to the nation's laws for undertrial prisoners, is now likely to spend the rest of it in jail.

As Tagore wrote in one of his patriotic songs: "Blessed am I that I was born in this country! Sarthaka janama amar, jonmechhi ei deshe!"

THE ISRAELI STATE - RABID OR MERELY SICK?

That the Gaza invasion is meant to serve the electoral ambitions of Israeli politicians was made clear by Jonathan Cook earlier in two separate pieces. Now Johann Hari gives some of the historical context behind this utterly futile massacre which are not being adequately presented in the BBC/CNN/Faux news international MSM.

Here is an extract from the article that is worth recording here separately, only because it makes nonsense of the assiduously fostered Israeli self-image of being victims of Hamas terrorism:

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Hari's reasons for Israel's behaviour: an Israeli conviction that peace must be imposed on the Palestinians on terms that favour Israel exclusively. This is now a commonly accepted interpretation. In an essay titled The Charter of the Israeli State, Avigail Barbanel, a psychiatrist and former Israeli citizen who has abandoned the Zionism of her childhood and youth, analyzes this strange and persistent intransigence:

The development of the state of Israel and Israel's behaviour in the region have always been consistent with its charter. Israel sees that it would need as much land and natural resources as possible (such as water, which is scarce in the region), in order to accommodate the 13 millions Jews who are expected to flock to it from around the world, ‘when’ a new era of Jewish persecution begins. Israel would have to have enough housing, infrastructure and a functional economy. It would have to be a modern state in which Western Jews accustomed to technology, capitalism and affluence can feel comfortable. There is nothing inconsistent or strange in what Israel is doing to the Palestinians if you understand this charter. It surprises me that this is never discussed openly in any political analysis that I see.

At the heart of this conflict is not economics, oil, ‘war on terror’, religion or various regional loyalties. Rather it is an age-old psychology of persecution and survival to which all other considerations are subservient. Israel's loyalties are utilitarian. There is no great love there for any other peoples or countries. Israelis always think in terms of what is good for the Jews and what isn't, and they watch the world carefully from within this prism. Israeli children learn to see life from this point of view from a very young age. I was the same when I was growing up.

Only when we grasp this we can understand why negotiations with Israel mean so little; why Israel has never stopped building settlements on Palestinian land and has been consistently expanding its territory; why it's making life for Palestinians inside and outside of Israel so unbelievably hellish; why it's brutally restricting them to ever diminishing territories and why Israel is responding to Palestinian resistance with such disproportionate and overwhelming violence. Breaking down Palestinian resistance is critical from Israel's point of view not only because of the pain that Palestinian armed resistance causes in Israel, but also in order to destroy any aspirations Palestinians might have to return to their ancestral lands. Israel simply cannot afford this if it wants to stay an exclusively Jewish state.

Israel is a country based on racist considerations because of its very charter, and the circumstances through which it came into being. From the point of view of Israelis accepting the one-state idea, would change Israel into just another country where Jews live among non-Jews. The whole idea of a Jewish safe haven would have to be abandoned and there will be no guarantee that the new pluralist state would take in Jews if they were ever in need of rescue. Israeli Jews and many Zionists around the world believe that to ask them to live together with the Palestinian people is to ask them to go back to a state of insecurity and potential victimhood. They simply do not believe that this is reasonable, and therefore would never willingly agree to any solution that compromises their safe haven. This is one of the reasons Zionists counteract any criticism of Israel with persistent cries of anti-Semitism. They really believe that to end the exclusively Jewish state would leave all Jews anywhere in the world, vulnerable to another potential Holocaust.

It is clear to me that if justice is to be achieved for the Palestinians this fear-based, racist and immoral ideology has to be overcome because the fear of one people cannot and must not justify the destruction of another. But I do not believe that the Palestinians can afford to wait until Jewish psychology changed by itself, and Jews felt sufficiently safe in the world to let go of the idea of an exclusively Jewish safe haven.

I believe it will take serious international pressure on Israel, or a real change of heart on the part of Israelis for a one state solution to become a reality. I would like to be optimistic and think that this change of heart will happen eventually but am not sure I can. My doubts come from my own experience — after all it used to be my psychology too. Thus, in order to save the Palestinian people the world must take decisive action in this conflict, as it did in South Africa, or continue sacrificing one people for the sake of another.

The question now is: should the rest of the world simply stand by and watch, and leave the Israeli Samson, blinded by fear, to bring down the entire edifice of the middle east on the heads of all the people of the region? Or should Israel's friends shake its politicians and generals out of their disastrous mindset for Israel's own good, and for the good of the middle east? This is the plea the Lebanese The Daily Star makes in its editorial:

...A week into a campaign that has killed more than 400 people - dozens of them children or other innocent civilians, and dozens more just young men who signed up to serve as police officers at a time of widespread unemployment - Israeli leaders are now talking about a political solution. Was it really necessary to shed so much blood to learn that just as Israel's 2006 goal of "eliminating" Hizbullah was futile, the same would be true of Hamas now? Was it really necessary to make orphans, widows and grieving parents of so many people to learn that killing Arabs will not make their grievances go away? Hizbullah and Hamas exist in their current forms because Israel has insisted on making violence its primary method of communication; war will only make them stronger and more committed. A full and fair peace, on the other hand, might convince them concentrate their efforts on other areas.

Israel's recent leaders have failed each and every test put before them. More importantly, they have, in effect, betrayed both their own people and  their co-religionists abroad who have supported them for decades. If heavy pressure is not at last applied for the current generation to be replaced, the Israeli government will continue to be a menace to its neighbors, to US interests in the Middle East, and to the long-term welfare of the Israeli people.

And this is the country that India's current crop of "leaders" across the political spectrum regards as an ally that will help us achieve great power status!