UN expert: Saibaba’s detention is inhumane & senseless

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, denounced India's ongoing detention of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba as an "inhumane and senseless act" that must come to an end.

Saibaba, who is wheelchairbound and 90% disabled, was convicted by a trial court in 2017 for alleged connections to the proscribed Communist Party of India (Maoists) and its affiliated organization, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, resulting in a life imprisonment sentence.

"GN Saibaba is a longstanding defender of the rights of minorities in India, including the Dalit and Adivasi people...His continued detention is shameful. It bears all the hallmarks of a state seeking to silence a critical voice,” Lawlor said.

Engaging with the Indian government on the matter, Lawlor revealed that UN human rights experts have consistently raised serious apprehensions about Saibaba's prosecution.

In 2021, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his imprisonment to be arbitrary in nature.