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Plea to free political prisoners: Covid-19 risk

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 6/2/2020 12:49:28 AM

NEW DELHI, June 1: The CPI(ML) central committee on Monday urged the government and the judiciary to urgently free all undertrial political prisoners, especially the sick, vulnerable and elderly like Varvara Rao and G N Saibaba and entertain bail urgently for all elderly, women and pregnant in view of the galloping cases of COVID-19 in the Indian prisons.
It said the elderly renowned Telugu poet Varvara Rao has been taken so ill in the mail hospital that he has been shifted to an ICU. The 90% incapacitated Sai Baba, a professor of Delhi, was almost granted bail but denied on a lame duck excuse of his brother's house being in a containmeent area.
"Senior citizen with co-morbidities, Gautam Navlakha, was whisked away to Mumbai in a train, exposing him to COVID, just prior to the heading of his bail application in Delhi. Two senior women, Sudha Bhardwaj and Shoma Sen, well-respected in their fields, are refused bail from a jail where there are Covid positive cases," the CPI(ML) said.
It also cited persecution of those opposing the government in the case of the patently fabricated Bhima Koregaon case and the women protesters against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) by linking them to the north east Delhi violence. "None of those framed poses any physical threat, none of them with any possibility of evading trial and all have cooperated with police investigation," it said stressing that "release mechanism for people at particular risk of COVID-19 be provided."