July 10, 2021

High-profile custodial death highlights India’s Human Rights backslide

topic:	Political violence
located:	India
editor:	Tish Sanghera

No trial, no conviction, yet 84-year-old Parkinson’s sufferer Stan Swamy still spent almost 10 months in prison during a global pandemic.

He was denied a straw despite struggling to drink water without one and becoming increasingly dehydrated. Pleading to live out his final days at home, he was later denied bail on medical grounds. Could the state really have thought that the frail and bed-bound Swamy was a flight risk or a danger to others?

Swamy’s death this week has once again focused attention on India’s brutal treatment of dissenting voices and political prisoners.

A statement from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) said called on the Indian government to “ensure that no one is detained for exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and of association,” and that it was “deeply saddened and disturbed” by indigenous peoples rights activist Stan Swamy’s death.

Swamy, along with 15 others (human rights lawyers, trade unionists, activists, writers and intellectuals), was charged under the colonial-era UAPA law and labelled a terrorist by the National Investigation Agency. Known as the Bhima Koregaon 16, their alleged crime is stoking communal violence at an annual protest by low-caste Dalits.  

The UAPA law is hugely problematic and has been widely used by the current administration to target its critics. It contains vague offences like “promoting enmity between groups” and “intent to cause fear or alarm to the public”.

Finding evidence to prosecute someone under this law is easy by virtue of its ambiguousness. Ironically, the government appears to have found this part difficult. Recent reports by The Washington Post and Reporters’ Collective showed that spyware had been used to plant documents on the accused’s computers. 

These findings were now brought before the Bombay High Court and their case should be reheard. However, it's been crickets from the media and other parts of the judiciary who should have an interest in seeing justice carried out and questioning the government.

Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at a G7 session titled ‘Open Societies and Open Economies’ and said: “As the world’s largest democracy, India is a natural ally for the G7 and Guest Countries to defend shared values from authoritarianism, terrorism and violent extremism, disinformation and infodemics and economic coercion”. The irony was not lost on many at home.

Abroad, too, people are waking up to this dual narrative. India loves its moniker as “the world’s largest democracy” - but how long can this last? In addition to the UN, the European Union has called out the BJP-led government’s targeting of activists. 

After a series of events, including the farmers' protest, a public spat with Twitter over online censorship and being named the global internet shutdown capital, perhaps the veil is finally starting to slip.

Image: Gayatri Malhotra. 

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