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On 21 May, 84-year-old priest Stan Swamy joined the virtual hearing for his bail plea before the Bombay High Court through video conferencing. Surrounded by a couple of prison officers at the Taloja Central Prison, he looked extremely frail, finding it difficult to hear and respond to questions posed to him by the court.
Swamy had reasons for losing faith in JJ Hospital. He was admitted there twice before, but he saw no substantial improvement in his health.
In his plea for seeking release, Swamy submitted before the court, when he came to Taloja Jail, whole systems of his body were very functional. However, during his eight months of incarceration, there has been a steady regression of “whatever his body functions were”.
On 30 May, he was shifted to Holy Family Hospital on the directions of the court. Now, a little over a month later, on 5 July, Swamy passed away due to a cardiac arrest after his health further deteriorated. The Bombay High Court was due to hear his medical bail plea on Tuesday, 6 July.
On 21 May, when the Bench of Justice SJ Kathawalla and SP Tavade started to ask questions to Stan Swamy, the appalling health and living conditions of his life in jail were immediately revealed. The court was trying to contact and seek answers from a man who could not hear properly, required repeated assistance of the prison officers in even making sense of the questions being asked, and mustered efforts to string words together.
It completely escaped the court’s empathy that the person before them is an octogenarian, suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, has been hospitalised for the past six months and can’t even perform the most basic day-to-day activities without assistance.
Swamy’s apparent condition inside the jail was also worded out by him during the hearing:
While hearing Swamy’s plea, while listening to his story, the court completely forgot that he has been persistently asking for interim bail. The court, albeit implicitly, restricted the scope of the hearing to address Swamy’s need for medical treatment.
Desai was quick to sense the court’s empathy exhaustion. He realised that unless he explains the context and background of his client’s statements, the court may never get to understand it.
Therefore, Desai urged the court to pierce through the morbid thoughts of his client, to understand where the thoughts such as “I would rather die in jail” are coming from.
Desai underlined Swamy’s state of mind, the motivations and the lack thereof of his sentences that were strung together with immense struggle and disdain. “Swamy seems to have taken the ‘forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing’ approach,” Desai told the court.
Therefore, Desai requested the Bench for liberty to approach the court again if Swamy agrees to be hospitalised.
The 21 May hearing before the Bombay High Court was testament to the fact that to our criminal legal system, Stan Swamy was just an accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Despite his “steady regression” directly attributable to his incarceration, Swamy was unable to convince the court that he deserved to be treated like a human being; that his health was his fundamental right that the state must protect. Such is the injustice of the very foundation of UAPA, that an otherwise “innocent until proven guilty” was perverted to mean “not even human, guilty or not”.
Swamy continued to suffer and degenerate. And, on official records, he passed away an “accused charged under various sections of IPC and the offences under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act”.
(This article has been updated with the news of Father Stan Swamy's passing. It was originally published on 21 May.)
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Published: 21 May 2021,05:33 PM IST