Stan Sway has been waiting over 20 days for access to a straw and a sip. Swamy, an 83-year-old activist currently in jail after being arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, requested a sip and straw on November 6 because he has Parkinson’s disease and cannot hold a glass.
When he was arrested in Ranchi, Jharkhand, in October, he was carrying a small bag containing some belongings, including a straw and a sip, his lawyer Sharif Sheikh said. However, the contents were not released to him when he entered the jail, Sheikh said.
It took almost three weeks for the National Investigation Agency to inform the court overseeing the matter that it did not have Swamy’s straw and straw, as it had not confiscated them. The agency then told the court that it would need another 20 days to respond to a petition asking for permission to access the drinking fountain, as well as winter clothing. But the matter will be addressed now on December 4.
This is Father Stan Swamy, an 83-year-old tribal activist with Parkinson’s disease, who has been arrested by the NIA on absurd charges in the Bhima Koregaon case and has even been denied a straw for drinking. NIA says they don’t have straws! Here he is in August standing in solidarity with me. pic.twitter.com/GPbd0NnvLa
– Prashant Bhushan (@ pbhushan1) November 27, 2020
In the larger scheme of things, insensitivity of this type, both from the agency and the court, might seem minor. After all, it occurs at a time when draconian laws like the Prevention of Illicit Activities Act are recklessly invoked, when simply organizing protests that criticize the government is considered criminal, when other defendants in the Bhima case Koregaon have been retained. behind bars without a trace for years.
And indeed, treatment like this is normal, given the inhumane and overcrowded prison conditions faced by the majority of those behind bars, seven out of ten of whom are minors and non-convicts. The data points to how minors disproportionately tend to be Dalits or Adivasis, how few have access to decent legal representation, and the shocking number of defendants in prison who are eligible for release but simply have not been. .
Jail time is often used as punishment for those who have not been tried, whether they are ultimately convicted or not. In Delhi, which may be experiencing one of the coldest winters on record, students and activists arrested in this year’s violence cases have alleged that they are denied access to warm clothing and medicine.
Research has pointed out how the proportion of people who have not been tried in prison for more than three years has increased by 140% since 2000, how the ratio of inmates to prison staff is 756 to 1 with welfare officers a often completely absent, and how deaths in prisons are increasing at a faster rate than the increase in the prison population.
In relation to all this, what may only seem like a deliberate delay in providing Swamy with a basic service may not seem like a major complaint. However, it is instructive.
If even in the case of an 83-year-old disabled man, who says he has fallen several times in jail, he is losing his hearing, has Parkinson’s disease and does not ask for much more than a straw and a sip, in a matter that is likely to be covered by the media: the agency and the court are not moved to respond quickly with a modicum of humanity, what does it tell us about our justice system?
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