When Professor G N Saibaba, who teaches English at Delhi University's Ram Lal Anand College, was 'abducted' while on his way home from class by the Maharashtra police on May 9, 2014, no one expected that the wheelchair-bound academic would be physically ill-treated in jail.


But for the 14 months he was imprisoned in the Nagpur Central Jail, Professor Saibaba, who is 90 per cent disabled, was denied life-saving medicines and assistants, despite repeated court orders. A vocal critic of Operation Green Hunt, the Centre's anti-Maoist, anti-Adivasi campaign launched by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009 across the tribal belt of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Orissa, Professor Saibaba had faced interrogation and police raids earlier.


Charged with being a member of a banned terrorist organisation (the Communist Party of India-Maoist), providing logistics and helping in recruitment for the group, the academic/activist, who finally secured bail from the Bombay high court for three months for medical treatment, spoke to Jyoti Punwani about his experience in jail, lodged in the notorious anda cell reserved for terror accused and alleged Maoists. 
Read the interview here.