By Sushil Kutty
He is nearing 70 and he is a patient of several ailments. Branded an ‘Urban Naxal,’ he’s incarcerated in Navi Mumbai’s notorious Taloja Jail. Most ‘Urban Naxals’ are 60-plus, guys (‘guy’ accounts for both genders) who are not a flight risk (therefore no need to be kept chained to the wall in a dungeon in the bowels of the earth) or fit and strong enough to stick a knife to somebody’s throat.
According to people on the grapevine, civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha is neither a throwback to the ogre in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ nor Cain in blood-red bloom. He’s just another guy with an opinion! And the Constitution says opinions are kosher. But the government of the day apparently does not agree to some opinions. The Government that is led by somebody who you can name – Narendra Modi.
Talk is Navlakha doesn’t think much of Modi. He’s not alone, but forget that. Let’s get to the point. Story goes that Gautam Navlakha is blind as a bat without his glasses. Guess what, on November 27, his glasses got stolen. Yeah, right from under his nose from his cell in Taloja Jail. He couldn’t find it. How could he, when he didn’t have his glasses to peer at things and make them out? Don’t forget a short-sighted man without spectacles is like a man in a dark maze which leads to nowhere, only to more darkness.
Well, to Gautam Navlakha, it was an “emergency.” Taloja is a penitentiary. With the capacity to hold 2000 inmates. But which has more than 4000 bodies crammed in it. For a man almost blind, a man without his spectacles, every step he takes in Taloja is asking for trouble. He’s bound to step on somebody real nasty’s toes or maybe bloated belly. What happens then? It could be a cutthroat’s big toe. It could be a damnable drug don’s fat lard of a backside!
Gautam Navlakha without his spectacles was sightless and powerless in Taloja. He could have got himself beaten to pulp. The worst part: He couldn’t have seen what was coming – a bunched fist or a mighty awful kick to the side. Not without his glasses. They were stolen, remember! From a high security prison. As many as 3999 inmates could have seen the crime taking place. When Gautam Navlakha’s back must have been turned, or he was asleep.
The point is, a crime was committed. In, of all the places, a high-security prison. But there was more. Those assigned to hold “criminals” and stop them from committing crime failed to ensure that the personal effects of prisoners did not go missing – stolen in the dead of the night or in broad daylight. Taloja is a pathetic prison run by irresponsible men. People with no sense of duty. Gautam Navlakha, rendered almost blind without his glasses, was not allowed to reach out to friends in the outside world for a replacement of his lost sight!
He informed the jail authorities of the theft. Instead of trying to locate the stolen goods or even commiserate with Navlakha and suggest, without being told that “let’s get you another pair of glasses,” the uncaring prison staff stared at him like nincompoops and refused to allow him even a telephone call to request for a fresh pair of glasses. They lied to his face and bluffed him along, maybe even laughed behind his back.
No empathy. No sympathy! Not in the folks who lord over Taloja. Everybody has rights. Even an under-trial. And prisons are to be run by rules. There’s the Jail Manual. What does the Jail Manual say about thefts in prison? What happens when one is reported? Is there a procedure to be followed? Was the proper procedure followed in Navlakha’s case?
Point is, several Sections of the criminal code were breached. What did the prison authorities do? True, a “call” was allowed after three days. Navlakha telephoned his partner Sahba Husain and told her of the steal and his plight. She got the new pair made and sent them to Taloja by post, not forgetting to inform Taloja that Gautam was almost blind without spectacles and that the new pair would be arriving by courier, please ensure they are handed over to Navlakha.
Guess what, Taloja is blind. And deaf! In a highly despicable manner, downright criminal, the Taloja authorities refused to accept the parcel when it arrived. Gautam Navlakha’s eyesight was not fully restored to him because the men who run Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai do not have the grace and the empathy or the sympathy to help a fellow human being in distress, a man who was staring into a bottomless pit and begging for some light at the end of the dark tunnel!
Republic TV mascot Arnab Goswami was also held in Taloja. He did not hear of Navlakha’s stolen glasses. Would he have done anything if he had known? Well, he didn’t, when he stepped out. Apart from stating that he was in Taloja with drug peddlers and drug addicts, journalist high-faulting anchor Arnab Goswami didn’t say anything of the conditions in Taloja.
It’s not just Navlakha. There was the ‘Old Man And The Jail’, 83-year-old Stan Swamy who, afflicted with Parkinson’s, pleaded for “straw and sipper” and was told by the NIA they couldn’t care less. Heartless, or plain simple mean! These “Men in Suits”, who compare themselves to the FBI, said it was between Taloja and Stan. Finally, after two months of enforced delay, Stan Swamy got his straw and sipper.
Gautam Navlakha’s case went to the Bombay High Court which said “humanity is most important”, something that escaped the folks running Taloja. “Humanity is most important. Everything else will follow. Today we learnt about Navlakha’s spectacles. This is high time to conduct a workshop for even jail authorities,” a two-judge bench of the court said. “Can all these small items be denied? These are all humane considerations.”
Sahba Husain in a statement said Gautam Navlakha was in “acute distress, unable to see things around him, and his blood pressure had shot up because of that.” She alluded to the “tall claims” made by India to foreign governments on extradition cases and jail conditions in India. Truly, people with 20/20 vision are blindly going through their paces when running India and India’s institutions. That much is plain to see. Even a cardsharp will agree. (IPA Service)