Prominent lawyer Ram Jethmalani on Tuesday offered to defend rights activist Binayak Sen, who was sentenced by a trial court to life imprisonment for sedition, in a higher judiciary. He also said he did not find it contradictory to fight the case and be a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP at the same time. “No party line says that lawyers should not appear for some people,” Mr. Jethmalani said. He said...

Public outrage at the sentencing of physician and rights activist Binayak Sen continued on Tuesday, with philosopher Noam Chomsky, historian Romila Thapar and 80 others, including leading academics, writers and journalists, signing a joint statement condemning the “unbelievable savagery” of the sentence. Urging his immediate release as well as the early hearing of his appeal “with enlightened reason” by the higher judiciary, the statement said: “The damage done by this shocking...

Indian civil society was dismayed and horror-struck when human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has spent over three decades caring for the poor in tribal areas of central India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘sedition’ along with two others, Piyush Guha and Narayan Sanyal by a Raipur Sessions Court judge.  Protests are taking place everywhere in the country and the members of India’s vibrant civil society, peoples’ movements,...

Maoist leader was himself charged with sedition only as an after-thought Narayan Sanyal is a 74-year-old man with white hair parted to one side and fibromatosis in both hands. His arrest memo notes that he wears dentures, has spots on his body and smokes cigarettes. “My health is not going well, arthritis is a new thing catching up, age is telling,” he writes in a letter addressed to a ‘Dear...

A "typographical error" in a Chhattisgarh police affidavit before the Supreme Court could turn the location of a crucial arrest from Station Road to something as different as "Mahindra Hotel". Or so it seems from the controversial Raipur session's court verdict holding human rights activist Binayak Sen guilty of conspiracy to commit sedition. In it's December 24 judgment, the trial court overlooked the improbability of such a drastic change resulting from...