Prof. G.N. Saibaba is a f
ormer Delhi University professor who is currently serving life sentence for his alleged links to Communist Party of India (Maoist) and his health is in critical condition. He wrote a letter from Nagpur Central Jail. This time he wrote to Anjum. Anjum is one of the central figures of Arundhati Roy’s new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
Dear Anjum,
How are you? I hope you are doing well along with the entire Ministry in Jannet Guest House. I hope you still remember me six months after my disappearance from Delhi. I know it’s easy to forget people who go to prisons or the otherworldly worlds. Life outside on the Earth has to go on.
At a south Delhi housing complex, Vasantha Kumari, wife of Prof GN Saibaba, waters the plants in her backyard in quiet reflection. Some of them, large tubs of month-old flower saplings, shoot up defiantly under the hot April sun. Gardening was something they loved doing together. The tubs hold vivid memories — him exerting himself on the wheelchair, insisting on sowing all the seeds, and her chiding him to rest instead. Days later, on March 7, he would be locked away inside the Nagpur Central Jail, to serve life imprisonment, after being convicted by the Gadchiroli sessions court under sections 13, 18, 20, 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and section 120B of the Indian Penal Code for connections with the banned Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), an organisation allegedly affiliated to the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist).
