NEW DELHI: About 100 intellectuals from around the globe have appealed to President Ram Nath Kovind and Chief Justice of India S A Bobde for the release of differently-abled professor G N Saibaba and octogenarian poet Varavara Rao amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
The signatories include academicians like Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Indrani Chatterjee, Suvir Kaul, Wendy Brown and Homi K Bhabha, among others.
They said Rao and Saibaba were imprisoned on ‘fabricated’ charges.
In view of the duo’s deteriorating health conditions, the Covid outbreak in prison posed an increased danger to their lives and they should be immediately released on bail, the signatories said.
Saibaba who suffers from a number of life-threatening ailments including acute pancreatitis, cardiac complications, hypertension and impacted gallbladder stone, has lost most of the functioning of both his hands since he was imprisoned, the letter said.
The continued negligence of jail authorities is ‘effectively a death sentence’ for him during the pandemic, the letter added.
“Jail authorities have not permitted him to send or receive letters in his native tongue, Telugu. Even when his mother visited him, they insisted that he speak to her only in English despite the fact that she does not speak the language. Now she is on her deathbed, battling terminal cancer, while her son languishes in jail, a political prisoner denied medical care,” the appeal said.
Rao, a public intellectual and civil rights activist, has shown a commitment to working for the oppressed, the academics said.
With Maharashtra being a Covid epicentre, Rao, who suffers from multiple ailments, should be immediately released, they added.