Top Maoist leader’s life in peril at Jharkhand Jail 
Charubrata Ray

Seventy-five year old polit bureau member of Communist Party of India (Maoist) Sushil Roy is gradually pushed towards death due to deliberate medical intelligence in Jharkhand , alleges his younger brother Dr Shyamal Roy , who heads a human rights body Dodhichi.. Speaking to IPA while  leaving for Ranchi, he said.. “ Sinking to total blindness, he has a fractured Hip-joint, severe Prostrate enlargement , which I suspect has turned malignant as he often urinates blood). These aside,  excruciating pain due to  Piles, hypertension, Diabetes, Cervical Spondylitis, and Ischemia are other ailments. The custodial authorities have been indulging in deliberate medical negligence probably out of desperation in scooping out information the police are in search of. I am not concerned with politics nor am I associated with any political party or mass organization thereof. I am concerned about the worrisome deterioration of my elder brother who may  die anytime.” 

The ailing and decrepit Maoist PB member is lodged at the Giridih Mandal Kara but his under-trial detention that began at Midnapore Jail in West Bengal has crossed 86 months. At present he is at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, but his physical conditions deteriorate further. The RIIMS authorities want him to be treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

Three civil rights organization, Kolkata-based Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, New Delhi-headquartered People’s Union for Democratic Rights and Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee urged the chairperson, National Human Rights Commission of India to intervene in a jointly written letter. Roy is “ a victim of police vendetta and abuse of law” and denied adequate medical treatment. “Roy wrote in a letter to the West Bengal Ex. Chief Miinister (Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee)  that the police officers had bluntly  told him ‘You are not telling anything, only stories. I will frame you in such a case that you have to be in jail for the rest of your life and you will die in jail.’ We, therefore, put before you our earnest prayer to save the life of Mr. Sushil Roy who has no one but his only younger brother, Dr Shyamal C. Roy, resident of Kolkata, to look after him”, they wrote to explain the gravity of the situation. The three civil rights organizations cited the effective intervention the Apex Court  for release of “80 year-old and ailing Pakistani virologist, Dr Khalil Chishty, on humanitarian grounds” and requested the NHRC to release the Maoist leader so that Amitadyuti Kumar, APDR working president , Paramjeet Singh and  Preeti Chouhan ,PUDR secretaries and Chiluka Chandrasekhar, general secretary, APCPL , to prevent his custodial death

The UT prisoner was arrested on 21  May, 2005 and produced at the court of chief judicial magistrate ,Midnapore .Till date, 12 cases – all criminal and not political – have been slapped on him of which four were in West Bengal. He got bail in all but thereafter eight cases were framed by the Jharkhand Police but was granted bail in five by Ranchi High Court, got acquitted in one. But he was further detained for a year from August, 2010 under the National Security Act on 17 of August, 2011 and  two more cases were invoked against him in Jharkhand (granted bail in one by the Ranchi C  on 29 July  2012. An appeal for bail is pending at the Ranchi HC after the bail petition was turned down  by the district and sessions’ court at Giridih.

Dr Roy alleges that guidelines, laid down by  Justice Dilip Kumar Basu  and  endorsed further in   D.K. Basu Versus State of West Bengal (1997 (1) SCC 416) , were not followed before and after the arrest of Sushil Roy who was treated as a criminal , not as a  political  worker . One of the directives states – “The arrestee should be subjected to medical examination by a trained doctor every 48 hours during his detention in custody by a doctor on the panel of approved doctors appointed by Director, Health Services of the State or Union Territory concerned. This was seldom adhered to, Dr Roy asserted.

A senior functionary of Peoples Union for Civil Liberties in West Bengal Ajay Datta, an advocate at the HC of Calcutta, fully supports the demand that the septuagenarian Maoist leader be released and proper medical care “be delivered right away”. Speaking to this correspondent, Datta  said,  quoting the directive, “A clear order by Justice Dilip Kumar Basu' on 5 April 1991 specifically stated in West Bengal  ‘detention of most of the political prisoners is illegal and in violation of their fundamental rights as contemplated in Article 21 of the Constitution of India’. Sadly true, the order is ignored in almost all the states, especially Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, but in Orissa and West Bengal too.