The Curious Case of Binayak Sen

Dilip D’Souza

HarperCollins

192 pages, R250

In May 2007, pediatrician, public health specialist and civil rights activist Binayak Sen was arrested for acting as a courier between jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal and businessman Piyush Guha. Three years later, all three were sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of sedition and cooperating with terrorist organisations. D’Souza analyses the often flawed mechanism of justice in India and also discusses the poor state of rural healthcare, which contributed to the rise of the Naxalite movement and thus, arguably, to Sen’s imprisonment.