Hyderabad: Political leaders and representatives of mass organisations paid homage to Prof. G.N. Saibaba, who died here on Saturday, aged 54 years. The professor’s body was later donated to the Gandhi Hospital.
A minor scuffle ensued in the morning as activists tried to lay Saibaba’s body at Gun Park for people to pay tribute, to which the police objected. The body was then taken to his brother’s residence in Moula Ali.
BRS MLA T. Harish Rao, condoling the death, said, “His death just seven months after coming out of incarceration of 10 years is painful. His health had deteriorated when he was in jail. Who will account for the pain a 90 per cent disabled person underwent? The family’s decision to donate his body to the Gandhi hospital sets an example for others.”
Slogans of “KTR go back” rent the air when BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao came to pay his respects.
Addressing a gathering of activists, Arasavilli Krishna, president of the Revolutionary Writers Association, called on intellectuals and crusaders with pro-people ideologies to unite.
“Writers must not surrender to small rewards, self-promotion or thirst for recognition; instead they should demonstrate anti-fascist awareness. Writers should come into public life with an anti-government spirit,” he said.
Expressing worry about the deteriorating tolerance for dissent even in the judiciary, civil liberties activist Prof. G. Haragopal said, “The judiciary should be protecting rights. But the judge who sentenced Saibaba had said that his hands were tied under the law, which stopped him from awarding the death sentence. The Supreme Court had a special sitting on a Saturday to halt his release when the Bombay High Court granted him relief. Jails should be corrective instruments and not used for stubbing dissenting voices.”
Muralidharan, a member of the CPM central committee, opined that Saibaba’s death is a loss to the democratic movements.
“The way he was treated mirrors the cruelty of the system. The judiciary failed him despite being diagnosed with a problem in his gallbladder when he was in jail,” he said.
Hem Misra, a co-accused who was released along with Saibaba, recalled that he had to resort to a hunger strike to even get a water bottle.
“This is a premeditated murder and meant to punish the thought process,” he said.
Senior journalist and former editor K. Ramachandra Murthy categorized the death as murder by the government.
“A government which keeps a 90 per cent disabled person in the ‘Anda’ cell in jail and charges him with a bid to overthrow the state is nothing but irresponsible, inhumane, illegal and illicit. Varavara Rao is still being kept in Mumbai and has to seek permission to come to Hyderabad,” he said.
Former journalist Mallepalle Lakshmaiah opined that any government which has a humane approach could not have treated Saibaba the way he was. Sociology professor Surepally Sujatha said that everyone should take inspiration from Prof. Saibaba.
CPI national secretary Dr K. Narayana, who paid his respects to Saibaba at the Gandhi hospital, before his body was donated, wrote in a letter to the Chief Justice of India that the apex court should keep in mind the idiom ‘justice delayed is justice denied’.
He urged that the highest seat of justice should find out who was guilty if Prof. Saibaba was not guilty.
