The commission owes an apology to the people of this country for failing to prevent the death of a dedicated academician. (NB: Not just the commission, but the judiciary is complicit. The NHRC is headed by a retired justice of the Supreme Court. I will remind our judges of the unique position of a judge, nearest to the divine. They could read about Rosario Livatino, murdered by the Sicilan Mafia in 1990 at the age of 37. He was fearless and incorruptible. Livatino advocated the absolute independence of the judge from any external influence, as well as coherence in personal and professional life. This transparency and credibility, he wrote, should be visible “outside the walls of his office, in the ordinariness of his relationships.” When a judge becomes an ideological partisan, he or she betrays the very concept of justice; and if they are believers, the are in defiance of dharma itself. The NHRC should wind itself up and become an adjunct of its favorite political group. DS)
Henri Tiphagne and Edgar Kaiser
The story of Professor G.N. Saibaba is unique and heart-wrenching. A former English professor at the University of Delhi, a person with 90% disability and bound to a wheelchair, yet labelled an urban naxal by the state. Saibaba’s disability did not stop him from fighting for the rights of Adivasis. Like the fate of many other human rights defenders (HRDs) in India, he was falsely implicated in a case and subjected to a long incarceration, despite two acquittals in the same case by the Bombay high court.
The prison conditions affected his health, which led to his death a few months after his release from jail. His death marks the failure of our judiciary, the government, prison authorities and the police. Most importantly, it is the failure of an independent body with a mandate to protect and promote human rights – the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Despite several appeals to the NHRC regarding Saibaba, the commission found every reason to dismiss them.
Human Rights Defenders Alert (HRDA) is a network that initiates action on behalf of HRDs under threat or with security concerns. The HRDA filed several complaints in this case before the NHRC but none reached their intended outcome. On September 13, 2013, the police raided Saibaba’s residence inside Delhi University and put his whole family under house arrest in different rooms for around four hours, even threatening his daughter…
https://thewire.in/rights/how-the-nhrc-failed-to-protect-g-n-saibaba
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