Dr. Binayak Sen, paediatrician and senior civil rights activist, has spent decades training and helping people in villages in Chhattisgarh - running free clinics in remote areas and helping enable communities to provide health care. He is also the national vice-president of People’s Union for Civil Liberties and a critic of the Salwa Judum - the government-sponsored movement to counter the Naxalites.
He has recently been charged for ‘aiding and abetting Naxal activity in the State’ under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 2004 and is in federal custody.
Outrage against this action has been universal. There are a number of appeals on-line for his release: Asian Human Rights Commission, People’s Movement, People’s Union for Democractic Rights. And one that everyone can and should sign.
Dr. Sen’s nephew is a friend and fellow History graduate student at the University of Chicago.
chanced upon your post at the same time as i was putting up mine. for me he was my dear doctor, and i do hope that it will all end well.
[...] covers the arrest of Dr.Binayak Sen. Dr. Binayak Sen, paediatrician and senior civil rights activist, has spent decades training and [...]
It happens only in India where thousands of criminal are freely moving around the society and good people like Dr.Sen are behind the bars.
I read your artilce on Sen when researching mine on my blog “India Indeed”. It seems like a lot of people support him because of his stellar resume and public service. I do believe that he is being targeted by the government and being unfairly imprisoned but one needs to really examine if and what his links might be with the organization before declaring him innocent because he is a great Pediatrician or human rights activist.
For updates on the case:
http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Human-rights/2007/sen-updates.html
Sandeep
[...] US today to mark the one-year anniversary of the detention of Dr. Binayak Sen in Chattisgarh. Sepoy wrote about it last year. Yesterday, twenty-two Nobel Laureates called for his [...]