'My 7 years in Anda cell were the most inhuman form of solitary confinement'

'When there was no crime committed, everything had to be fabricated.'
'They see it as a war, and everything is fair in love and war.'

Prashant Rahi, acquitted on March 6 along with Professor G N Saibaba, has spent a total of 12 years behind bars since 2007 -- despite being innocent. He was acquitted in both the UAPA cases in which he was charged with being a Maoist, the first for his participation in the movement of evacuees against the huge Tehri Dam in the newly-formed state of Uttarakhand, and the second in 2013 at Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. Yet, the 65 year-old is surprisingly free of bitterness.

In between visits to doctors arranged by daughter Shikha to check out various health problems developed in Amravati Central Jail over the last seven years, the former engineer-turned-journalist spoke to Jyoti Punwani about life behind bars.

It's been more than 48 hours since you stepped out of jail. Have you got used to freedom?

This is the third time I'm coming out of jail. For me, being free is no problem, it's those around me who may feel inconvenienced. There's a natural tendency to go back to what happened in the last seven years, so many memories... I keep talking about them.

I've noticed I've developed behavioural problems, having been inside so long. Sometimes I find it difficult to hear what people are saying.

For most of the last seven years, I was not part of life as you would know it. I had cut off myself; deliberately tried not to hear things.

"Deliberately tried not to hear things". Why?

Because of the bigotry of a few ultra-fundamentalists in jail with me, those convicted of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts and the Aurangabad arms haul case.

Some of these Islamists were a mirror image of the Hindu right. Like the latter, these also politicised their religion, but had no qualms about unholy alliances with dons who were obviously Hindutva supporters.

This time you were in the notorious Anda Cell. What was it like?

The Anda is an egg-shaped concrete enclosure built of cells alongside the interior. Amravati, with just 15 cells, is the state's smallest Anda.

Each cell has its inward wall made up of vertical iron rods and a gate that locks in the inmate from 6 pm to 7 am and 12 noon to 3 pm.

Sunlight would enter into that cage through another mesh of iron rods fitted above a rectangular compound in the Anda enclosure. The sky could only be seen through that mesh.

Vegetation and even soil is out of bounds for the inmates. Every facet thus breeds a kind of lifeless negativity, day in and day out.

It's a panopticon where every prisoner is placed constantly in the unending gaze of the other. There's no scope for privacy.

Now, they've also installed four CCTV cameras atop the inner compound, so that the officers may pry upon every single inmate right into his cell from their office.

So it's not solitary confinement?

Perhaps not as you might imagine.

Life inside the cell is solitary indeed, in comparison to common barracks. Human interaction is restricted to the confines of the Anda.

It's suffocating to interact with the same persons for years. All Anda cells have partitions because fights break out between the inmates. But the Anda Cell in Amravati was too small to be partitioned; that would have left no space for us to walk.

Could you develop a relationship with any of the inmates?

I could make friends with a Kashmiri convict there; he taught me Urdu, I taught him English.

You had experienced solitary confinement during your first prison stint in Uttarakhand?

Yes, for the greater part of my earlier four-year stint in four different Uttarakhand jails.

In my very first month at Haldwani, they'd cleared the entire solitary enclosure for me! Subsequently, while at Dehradun jail, the very city where I'd been an accredited correspondent with a national English daily, some local Hindi tabloids sensationalised my arrest and alleged that I could be freed by Maoists, leading to solitary confinement, once again, over a prolonged period.

But the seven years in the Anda were the most inhuman form of solitary confinement I've faced. The closed structure made it difficult for one's senses to function normally. Remaining sane became a challenge. Anxiety prevailed as a constant emotion.

You had to be hospitalised twice. Was that because of the poor facilities?

Actually, it was because of the specific forms of hostility that I encountered from my fellow inmates between May 2020 and February 2023. I wouldn't go along with them in their illegal deeds, hence I was attacked, and my food was also poisoned by some of them.

The first time, after I had defended myself in an attempted attack, I made a written complaint. In response, both of us had extensions in our locked-in timings for about eight months. It reduced my walking hours drastically, leading in the extreme cold of January 2021 to sciatica.

The food poisoning began in July 22. It led to severe, post-meal abdominal pain with acute diarrhoea for 10-12 or even 15 hours. I was reduced to a physical wreck.

It was finally revealed after yet another physical attack that my food was being laced with dry seeds.

How could they get access to your food?

We would fill up our plates and bowls with helpings from the meals brought in twice a day, keep them in our cells to eat later, and then go about our regular activity: walk in the compound, mingle with others. These people used that opportunity to mix the dry seeds in my food.

When this entire plot came out, a constable was suspended for a while for being in league with these inmates.

The worst phase in this illness was having to use the Indian-style toilet. I had developed acute knee pains as a result of having to lie on my back over five days and nights of sciatica. It was excruciating to squat in the toilet with that knee pain.

Finally, a folding commode chair was provided, but only after my daughter filed yet another petition. It had been bought for me a month earlier, but it wasn't given because the iron legs could could pose a security risk!

Were you tortured in custody in the Gadchiroli case, as you were the first time by the Uttarakhand police?

No, but my co-accused Hem Mishra, Pandu Narote, Mahesh Tirki were tortured badly.

The police twice threatened me with third degree, but they didn't do it. I think it's because they were flooded with thousands of protest letters about my illegal detention.

Students of IIT BHU, where I had given a couple of lectures while I was out on bail, sent letters on learning of my arrest, including to Amnesty International, following which an international call was issued and thousands of protest letters were sent from all over the world to the chief secretary, Maharashtra government, and the police department.

The IO of our case, Suhas Bawche, later admitted to the press that they had received 20,000 letters, and he was still counting. "It's good, my son is happy with the foreign stamps he's managed to get," he'd said, trying to dismiss their significance.

Only once, when I refused to give Bawche my email password, he gave me a solid blow on my jaw. He was infuriated when I told him: "Why should I let you see my email account? Are you a friend of mine?"

I must reveal here what Bawche told me when my lawyer Surendra Gadling argued in court against my second police remand. "So Gadling has come here for you? Now we're going to fix him." This was in 2013, so they had him on their list right from then. (Gadling was arrested in June 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case.)

The judgment shows how brazenly the police broke all rules when it came to collecting the so-called evidence against all of you. What made the police so confident of getting away with this?

What else could they have done? When there was no crime committed, everything had to be fabricated.

What they did was not in response to any crime. The arrests, the entire case, was part of what they call "counter-insurgency strategy". They see it as a war, and everything is fair in love and war.

As part of this strategy, they look out for people who are vulnerable, who can be framed. I already had a case against me where I was accused of being a Maoist; so they must have kept me under surveillance. I was in Raipur when they abducted me; that's not far from Gadchiroli. Counter-insurgency operations are always conducted across states.

In my view, this particular case was instituted to divert attention from a then ongoing multi-state, independent fact-finding exercise in Gadchiroli, to probe allegations of police atrocities committed over 2012-13 as part of the said "counter-insurgency operations." Gadchiroli's operations were being touted then as an ideal at the ministry of home affairs. Our arrests and the case helped prevent a patent exposure of the same.

Attempts had been made even earlier to nab me in Benares, but having lived there when studying at IIT BHU, I knew that city too well to be caught unawares.

Were you surprised by the conviction?

Yes, given the nature of the evidence and the testimony of the panch witness, who'd pointedly denied that I had anything incriminating on me.

In fact, I was never bothered about this case. I was more worried about my Uttarakhand case.

Interestingly, my Uttarakhand case ended in an unassailable acquittal in January 2022 at the sessions trial stage itself, whereas this Gadchiroli case acquittal could come only from the high court, that too after futile attempts by the Maharashtra government to avert it.

Even when the conviction and life-sentence was pronounced in 2017, I thought I'd be out on bail in six months, because in the pre-trial stage itself I'd got bail despite UAPA, on the grounds that the alleged seizure of incriminating documents from my possession at the time of arrest prima facie appeared false.

I'd told Vijay Tirki (sentenced to 10 years) he'd be out within two months.

But then Tirki's bail hearings kept getting adjourned. Incidentally, our bail was rejected even though the court said that no terrorist act could be ascribed to either of us.

Vijay Tirki had to wait until September 2019 to get bail from the Supreme Court, but then the Covid lockdown began, and courts started functioning only virtually. Bail was a closed chapter for me thereafter.

At the end of the sessions trial, I had been so confident of getting out that I'd carried just enough money to last me for six months. I didn't imagine that I'd have to keep borrowing money from my daughter over seven long years. I used to be so embarrassed that I would be in two minds about little things like whether I should buy a new toothpaste or soap for washing vessels.

I've read that jail authorities try to break your dignity. Could you survive with your dignity intact?

Dignity is the first casualty in jail. Every movement is watched; every chink in your armour is used by the administration, and also by your co-inmates, for those who are outright criminals acquire their dignity generally by dominating others.

Maintaining dignity was a constant battle for me. You have to wage a long and patient struggle to do so.

The only stage at which I felt my dignity violated was when I was asked by a newly-appointed superintendent, last December, to remove my old and tattered shoes while she was on her inspection round. This while I was inside my cell!

I humbly told her the unpolished floor was too rough and dust gathered easily, causing painful cracks in my soles and toes.

"Don't you remove your shoes whenever you go to a temple or to someone's house?" she asked.

I wanted to tell her I was in my own "house", but said nothing. But I didn't remove them.

After she'd walked ahead, I called an officer accompanying her and asked if it was against the Jail Manual. When he said no, I told him to tell her I would not obey her, because her order had no legal basis.

On her way out, she again made a loud remark on my shoes and then, within two hours, I got a memo for disrespecting and disobeying the superintendent, with the threat that my mulakaats and other facilities would be withdrawn if I didn't give an explanation within seven days.

I found out that such a punishment was only given to prisoners who went on a hunger strike. I wrote to my lawyer asking him to take this up, but the letter was barred.

Finally, I had to give an "explanation" that I had had no intention of disrespecting the superintendent, and henceforth would not use any footwear during officers' inspection rounds. But after that, I started wearing socks. The jailors would look at them each time, but say nothing.

Your daughter fought a lot for you.

Shikha bore the brunt of my imprisonment. She prevailed on lawyers to redress all my grievances, and helped them all through their preparations, since the unfortunate arrest in May 2018 of my original lawyer, Surendra Gadling.

During the appeal hearing at the high court, I could see her (through video-conferencing) typing out the arguments as the lawyers argued, so as to keep a record. She had suggested to the lawyers that the court be asked for permission for us to watch the video conferencing.

It's not just the dozens of books she bought for me and had delivered; she boosted my spirits with her regular calls and visits. She had an incredible, major role in my victory.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com