New Delhi/Kolkata: It`s the perfect Shubho Nobo Borsho, the Bengali New Year, for activist Binayak Sen`s family. The Supreme Court granted him bail and a chance to walk out from the Chhattisgarh jail, where he has been serving life imprisonment on charges of sedition and links with Maoists.
For his mother, wife and daughter, this was an overwhelming moment.
"It`s a very emotional moment and I am relieved. But I did shut my mind for the last four months and had stopped thinking... I have now slowly started breathing and unwinding and I am really feeling good," Sen`s wife Ilina told the media in Delhi after the verdict.
"We have to take copy of the order to trial court and bail has to be activated and Binayak has to be released from jail and lot of work still needs to be done," she added.
His daughter Aparajita was equally elated: "Our family was really shattered and it was a tough journey with Baba (father) inside (jail). This (judgment) is the result of everybody`s hard work. Now I am looking forward to meeting him."
Sen`s mother Anasuya said this was the perfect beginning of the New Year.
"I am so relieved. A son will come home and you can imagine how a mother feels when her son comes home. I am so happy," Anasuya told a news channel from her home in West Bengal.
"My son should be as free as an ordinary man. All the cases against him should be squashed as soon as possible so that he is totally free and can go to any place in the world. He cannot be Gandhi but he is a Gandhian and believes in non-violence. From his childhood days, he always hated violence."
Anasuya said there were moments when she was worried that she may not "live long enough" to see her son again.
"I wrote to him when he was sent to jail. But I could not write after that. When his wife went to meet him, he told her to ask me to write again, so I wrote again. Now I am happy that I don`t have to write letters, because I can just speak to him," she added.
Brother Dipankar Sen added that he was overjoyed.
No case for sedition was made out against Sen, the apex court bench of Justice H.S. Bedi and Justice C.K. Prasad said while making a scathing observation that a person does not become a Gandhian just because he is found with a biography of Mahatma Gandhi.
The bench said the bail would be subject to the satisfaction of the trial court. The court ridiculed the state`s submission that Sen was actively involved in spreading disharmony and disaffection against the state.
Sen, 61, at present in a jail in the Chhattisgarh capital Raipur, challenged the Feb 10 order of the Chhattisgarh High Court rejecting his bail plea.
He was sentenced by the trial court Dec 24, 2010, for sedition. He was also accused of acting as a courier between Maoist ideologue Narayan Sanyal and Kolkata-based businessman Piyush Guha, both of whom have also been jailed for life.
Ilina said, "I am always optimistic but am also realistic. That`s how I have stayed alive. The Dec 24 judgment was such a shock, because he was charged with sedition with no evidence. My husband and I have worked for Chhattisgarh for the last 30 years. We have always worked with and for the people. This is just an attempt to malign the work".
S.K. Farhan, Binayak`a lawyer, said: "We were eagerly awaiting the judgment and were confident that we will get justice, so am very happy. There is no evidence at all that he helped the Maoists. When there is a final hearing in the court we hope to get justice."
IANS
