Three women political prisoners, Shoma Sen, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Jyoti Jagtap who were all languishing in the women’s prison of Byculla jail under draconian UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case for the past three years without trial and bail, are now facing serious danger to their lives as inmates found COVID-19 positive, friends and family members of prisoners allege.
Family members and comrades of the accused in Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, serving as under-trial prisoners in Mumbai’s Taloja and Byculla jails, demanded the release of all political prisoners at a virtual press conference on Saturday. Their exhortation comes due to a lack of healthcare workers to treat the inmates during the pandemic.
On Thursday, prominent activist Sudha Bharadwaj, imprisoned in the Bhima-Koregaon case, called her daughter Maaysha from the Byculla prison and said she had diarrhoea, fatigue, and had lost her appetite and sense of taste for the last three weeks.
The hearing of Sudha Bharadwaj’s Special Leave Petition for medical bail in the Supreme Court on Thursday did not yield any relief for her, giving a big jolt to the immense faith vested by Bharadwaj’s friends and family members in the Apex Court’s humanitarian rationale.