G N Saibaba, a professor of English in Ram Lal Anand College of the Delhi University, was today sentenced to life imprisonment by a Gadchiroli sessions court for waging war against India for his alleged Maoist links and involvement in anti-national activities.
He, along with JNU student Hem Mishra and former journalist Prashant Rahi, and three couriers were provided with this sentence. They were convicted under the section 13, 18, 20, 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. One convict Vijay Tirki was sentenced to 10 yrs in jail. The public prosecutor had demanded life imprisonment on the basis of section 20 of that act which states that
Any person who is a member of a terrorist gang or a terrorist organisation, which is involved in terrorist act, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.
G N Saibaba was first arrested in May 2014 on charges of being a member of the banned CPI-Maoists plus providing logistics and carrying out recruitment for them. He was then provided bail for three months on 30th June 2015 in view of his worsening health. He was given bail again in August 2016, this time by the Supreme Court against the wishes of the Maharashtra Government, which thought freeing Saibaba would render him free to propagate his views and brainwash students. In a report published in February 2016 it was reported that Saibaba had recruited as many as four JNU students to carry out Maoist related activists. Incidentally these students also belonged to the Democratic Students union (DSU), of which JNU student Umar Khalid is also a member.
The biggest form of concern after this conviction is the confirmation of infiltration of left-wing terrorists in our educational institutions and the media which gives them a wide platform to poison the thought process of the masses under the garb of freedom of expression.
Interestingly, the aforementioned events were predicted in the movie Buddha in a traffic jam, where a professor in one of India’s premier institutes was a closet Maoist and aided their efforts by indirectly propagating their ideology and recruiting students whom he found were knowingly or unknowingly receptive towards his cause.
Almost predictably that movie was shunned and severely criticised by the so-called liberal, intellectual and tolerant brigade, and the creator of the movie was Vivek Agnihotri made an outcast for not following the unwritten norm of never touching certain ‘uncomfortable’ subjects.
