Every Monday, since 16 March this year, a group of between 50 to 100 protestors have been marching down the streets of Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh province, demanding the release of well-known paediatrician and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen.

They are part of the Raipur Satyagraha campaign that involves courting arrest while marching to high security Raipur jail where Dr Sen has been incarcerated for the past nearly two years now on false charges of being an accomplice to the banned Maoist insurgency in the state. The campaign, which brings activists from around the country to Raipur every week, plans to go on indefinitely till Dr Sen is finally released. Till now hundreds have been arrested and released as part of the satyagraha.

While such classical Gandhian methods are not likely to melt the hearts of the BJP run regime of Chief Minister Raman Singh the campaign is having a positive impact by helping change the climate of fear that has enveloped the entire state for several years now. At last the local media and civil society is mustering the courage to take a critical look at the state’s brutal response to the Maoist insurgency instead of blindly toeing the official ‘war on terror’ rhetoric .

Since 2005 the government sponsored Salwa Judum operations, which pit paramilitaries armed by the state police against Maoist guerrillas and their supporters have claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands from their homes in what is a virtual civil war like situation. The draconian ‘anti-terorrist’ laws that the Chhattisgarh authorities have promulgated ensures there is hardly any discussion or dissent allowed on the subject with all opponents- like Dr Sen- themselves branded as Maoists.

State prosecutors claim Binayak, who was arrested on 14 May 2007, passed on a set of letters from Narayan Sanyal, a senior Maoist leader in Raipur jail to Piyush Guha, a local businessman with allegedly close links to the left-wing extremists. He was supposed to have done this while visiting Sanyal in prison both in his capacity as a human rights activist and as a doctor treating him for various medical ailments.

The trial of Dr Sen , which began in a Raipur sessions court late April 2008, has however not thrown up even a shred of evidence to justify any of these charges against him. By end 2008, of the 83 witnesses listed for deposition by the prosecution 16 were dropped by the prosecutors themselves, 6 declared ‘hostile’, while 30 others have deposed without corroborating any of the accusations against Dr Sen.

Dr Sen has never denied meeting Sanyal, which he did with prior permission and in the presence of jail authorities. To prove there was a ‘conspiracy’ the prosecutors for example have to establish that apart from meeting Sanyal in prison, Dr Sen also met Piyush Guha in person some time or the other, in order to pass on the letters. So far not a single prosecution witness has confirmed this charge and without the thread connecting him to Guha however there is no connection at all between Dr Sen and the cases against the other two defendants, Sanyal and Guha.

With the floor falling out of the entire case against Dr Sen, a desperate prosecution, during the course of the trial, has even been caught red handed by defence lawyers, trying to plant forged evidence of his ‘links’ with the Maoists. A number of witnesses too, under obvious tutelage from the police, have been found trying to ‘improve’ their original written statements presented to the court.

Even more disturbingly, in their attempt to keep Dr Sen in prison for as long as possible the court hearings themselves are being dragged on with breaks of up to a month or more at times thus making the trial itself a punishment. Several neutral observers following the case, including from the Commonwealth and the European Union, have expressed concern at the denial of Dr Sen’s right to an open and speedy trial.

Given the weakness of the prosecution’s position Dr Sen should have been given bail by now but mysteriously this has not happened as yet. Normally bail is refused only in cases where the courts believe the accused can tamper with evidence, prejudice witnesses or run away. In Dr Sen’s case none of these apply as shown by the simple fact that at the time of his arrest last year he chose to come to the Chhattisgarh police voluntarily and made no attempt to abscond despite apprehensions of his possible detainment.

Instead of taking all this into account, on 2^nd December 2008, a High Court judge in Bilaspur summarily rejected a bail application filed by Dr Sen, confounding all known principles of law, fair play and justice. As if that were not enough a few days later the provincial police authorities, taking their political vendetta further, filed supplementary charges against him, adding on another 47 witnesses to the 83 already listed in the case.

In September 2007 too the same Bilaspur court had rejected a similar bail application after which on 10 December, the Indian Supreme Court in Delhi too had refused to admit a Special Leave Petition to consider bail. The Supreme Court bench initially heard the petition and even asked the Chhattisgarh government to file a reply but strangely dismissed the same petition at its next hearing without any explanation.

The real ‘crime’ for which Dr Sen is being punished for is his courageous work exposing the human rights violations carried out by police forces in Chhattisgarh. As national vice president of the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties, one of India’s oldest human rights groups, Dr Sen produced several reports criticising the Chhattisgarh government’s ‘Salwa Judum’ campaign.

The Salwa Judum campaign, according to many of its critics, is a thinly veiled attempt to relocate villagers - in the name of ‘protecting’ them from Maoists- while in fact plotting the handover of their land to corporations eyeing mineral wealth in the area. By focusing national attention on the brutalities accompanying this campaign Dr Sen obviously seems to have stepped on some powerful and sensitive toes somewhere.