An Indian court has again refused to grant bail to detained Jesuit priest, Stanislaus Lourduswamy, saying that the petition presented by the lawyers were “inadmissible.”
The 83-year-old priest, popularly known as Stan Swamy, a known tribal rights activist, was arrested by India’s National Investigation Agency on Oct. 8, 2020.
Father Swamy was living in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state in Eastern India, during the time of his arrest and was brought to Mumbai, about 1,750 km southwest.
He was placed in judicial custody in Taloja Central Jail near Mumbai for the past five months after he was charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.
The priest was accused of terror-related offenses under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for allegedly furthering the cause of banned communist groups through his civil rights organizations.
Authorities tagged the priest’s Persecuted Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee, a human rights organization, as a front organization of Maoist and extremist groups.
The Bagaicha, an organization established by Father Swamy to empower the tribal group Adivbasis, was also tagged as a communist front.
The priest, through his lawyer, filed for bail on grounds that he is being framed by authorities due to the nature of his work and that he is suffering from serious ailments.
“He has undergone two hernia operations and is still suffering from abdominal pain,” read Father Swamy’s application for bail.
“He suffers intense pain due to spondylosis and tremors in both hands due to Parkinson’s,” it added.
Father Swamy’s counsel, Sharif Sheikh, argued that authorities also failed to produce any evidence of an act of terrorism committed by the priest.
Father Donald Miranda SJ, provincial superior of the Jesuits in Patna, described the court decision as “truly shocking.”
“How does keeping an 83-year-old man in prison serve the cause of justice?” he said.
Father Swamy is the oldest person in the country to face terror-related charges and he has joined 15 others including human rights activists, journalists and scholars arrested in connection to a 2018 incident of caste-based violence known locally as the Bhima Koregaon case.
The priest’s supporters said he is being branded as an anti-nationalist and was jailed because he was fighting for the implementation of laws passed by the parliament for tribal people and their constitutional rights.
On Oct. 26 last year, the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences called for his immediate release; following a similar statement issued by Indian bishops.
India’s National Crime Records Bureau showed that as many as 5,922 people were held under the coountry’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act between 2016-2019, with only 132 convictions.
The draconian law has come under severe criticism from international observers in recent years, as has India’s human rights record since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power.
In a recent “Freedom in the World Report 2021” by Freedom House, the country was downgraded from “free” to “partly free” for the first time.
