New Delhi, India – Vasantha Kumari shuffles by means of issues she must pack for her go to to Nagpur the place she’s going to meet her educational husband, Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba, who’s being launched from jail after a decade for suspected hyperlinks with Maoist rebels.

Saibaba, 57, a professor of English who’s paralysed waist down and makes use of a wheelchair, was arrested in May 2014 for being an alleged member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and charged beneath the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), an anti-terror regulation declared “draconian” by a number of rights teams.

In March 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On Tuesday, Saibaba was acquitted together with 4 others of all fees by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. Pandu Narote, the sixth accused within the case, died in August 2022 awaiting the decision.

This is Saibaba’s second acquittal. In October 2022, the Bombay High Court ordered his launch, saying authorized procedures weren’t correctly adopted through the trial. But inside 24 hours, the Supreme Court cancelled the order, stating the fees towards Saibaba and the opposite accused had been “very serious” and required a brand new listening to.

“On one side, we are joyful; on the other, we are afraid. They did the same thing in 2022. I know he has not done anything wrong. But now, I can only hope,” Kumari, additionally 57, advised Al Jazeera as she ready to journey to Nagpur, 1,072km (666 miles) south of New Delhi to obtain her husband.

She has causes to be anxious. Within hours of the courtroom order, the federal government in Maharashtra state, which had prosecuted Saibaba and others within the case, once more approached the Supreme Court to problem the acquittal.

In its 293-page verdict on Tuesday, the Bombay High Court stated the prosecution had failed to determine the grounds on which Saibaba was arrested within the case, together with the allegedly incriminating materials discovered at his New Delhi residence.

The courtroom held that mere possession of Maoist literature didn’t represent an offence beneath the UAPA – an overturning of the identical floor on which one other courtroom had ordered his life imprisonment in 2017.

‘Voice of tribal rights’

Saibaba, who taught at Delhi University, rose to prominence almost 15 years in the past when he protested towards Operation Green Hunt, a paramilitary offensive launched by the Congress-led authorities in energy on the time to crush an armed Maoist rise up in a number of elements of central and western India.

The Maoists say they’re waging a struggle towards the Indian state to guard the rights of the tribal and marginalised individuals, a lot of whom reside in forests sitting on high of huge mineral reserves eyed by influential personal firms.

Nandita Narain, retired maths professor and former president of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), advised Al Jazeera her colleague Saibaba is a strong voice in assist of tribal rights.

“[The] state is particularly bent on silencing voices in support of tribal rights in areas where a corporate plunder is taking place because the land is very mineral rich,” she stated. “He posed a greater challenge to the state and the corporates. That is why they wanted to silence him.”

Activists have described Saibaba’s imprisonment as a nationwide safety menace, regardless of his severe paralysis, as a textbook case of India’s extended – and infrequently botched – courtroom trials in addition to denial of amenities to disabled inmates within the nation’s perpetually cramped prisons.

Saibaba has had everlasting post-polio paralysis since he was 5. He used to crawl on the bottom and wore slippers on his palms till he moved from Hyderabad to New Delhi in 2003 to show at Delhi University’s Ram Lal Anand College and was lastly in a position to purchase a wheelchair.

During his decade-long imprisonment, he was twice contaminated with COVID-19, as soon as with swine flu, and recognized with extreme well being situations together with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with left ventricular dysfunction, a mind cyst, kidney stones and acute cervical spondylitis.

His spouse Kumari stated he by no means acquired the remedy he wanted in jail. “He faints frequently. He requires physiotherapy and cardiac monitoring,” she stated, including that she plans to get her husband handled at a very good hospital when he’s freed.

In the summer time of 2022, Saibaba had staged a three-week protest, together with a four-day starvation strike, to get a plastic water bottle in his cell. He had additionally protested towards a wide-angle CCTV digital camera recording the bathroom and bathing space of his jail. Following the protest, the jail authorities allowed him to maintain a water bottle and the digital camera angle was tilted.

When his mom died of most cancers in 2020, Saibaba was denied permission to attend her funeral. Kumari claimed the courts and the state discriminate in granting bails or acquittals primarily based on the accused’s political and ideological associations.

“You see how other accused are granted bail and acquitted so quickly, including rape and murder charges. However, when people like my husband are acquitted, the state steps in and prevents him from being released, keeping him in jail,” she stated.

In August final yr, Mary Lawlor, the United Nations particular rapporteur on human rights, slammed Saibaba’s prolonged detention as “inhumane”, citing grave considerations for his well being and demanding an instantaneous launch.

Lawlor stated his small cell had no window and a wall made from iron bars, “exposing him to extreme weather, especially in the scorching summer heat”.

‘He lost 10 years of his life’

For Kumari and their 26-year-old daughter Manjeera, the final 10 years have been harrowing.

Saibaba was suspended by Delhi University shortly after his arrest. The household was pressured to vacate college housing and obtained solely half of his wage till 2021, when he was sacked.

“In 2014, some intellectuals, students and writers formed a committee for Saibaba’s release. Through them, I received some financial and legal assistance,” stated Kumari.

But that was not sufficient. Kumari needed to promote her automobile in 2017 as a result of she wanted cash to run the family. Meanwhile, she utilized for odd jobs however couldn’t discover something. She is a biology graduate however by no means had a full-time job.

“I do some freelance work in Telugu language, but that barely pays for anything. I tried to get work. But when even young people aren’t getting any jobs, who would hire me?” she requested.

Even enterprise the 15-hour practice journey to go to her husband was troublesome to afford for Kumari, who final noticed her husband in November. She stated she used to satisfy him annually as a result of the journey was financially draining.

“At the prison, I had to stand in a queue at 7am and only got to meet him for 20 minutes, during which he inquired about the status of the case and told me what to say to the lawyer,” she stated as she flipped by means of the letters Saibaba had written to her from jail.

Kumari stated he was not writing a lot currently as she held a letter Saibaba wrote on October 24 which she stated they solely obtained this month.

“This is his first letter in three months. He couldn’t write anything because of swelling in his right elbow. He couldn’t even hold a book or newspaper,” she stated. “These 10 years apart have been extremely painful. He has lost 10 years of his life. They won’t be able to give us those years back.”

Kumari stated Manjeera was solely 16 when her father was imprisoned. “When she needed her father the most, he was not present.”

In UAPA instances, activists say the method is commonly the punishment. Only 2.2 p.c of such instances registered between 2016 and 2019 resulted in convictions, however the regulation makes acquiring bail extraordinarily troublesome and uncommon.

Legal specialists say the police use the stringent regulation after they have a weak case towards an accused and need to stop them from getting bail.

Narain, the retired professor, believes Saibaba’s decade-long imprisonment reveals that the Indian courts are “compromised” and have failed him and his household.

“People like him are a moral beacon for the entire country. In any other country, they would be revered. They are role models. They have gone beyond their own personal interests and worked for the ordinary people of this country,” she advised Al Jazeera.

Back at their floor flooring rented home in New Delhi’s Vasant Vihar space, a parcel of books lay on a espresso desk close to the window, which Kumari had meant to submit to her jailed husband.

That’s one much less factor she wants to fret about. “I won’t need to mail them now. He can read them at home when he is released.”