‘Joyful but afraid’: Disabled Indian academic Saibaba’s family on acquittal

The wheelchair-bound former Delhi University professor is acquitted after 10 years of imprisonment over alleged Maoist links. His family asks: Who will pay for the lost years?

New Delhi, India – Vasantha Kumari shuffles through things she needs to pack for her visit to Nagpur where she will meet her academic husband, Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba, who is being released from prison after a decade for suspected links with Maoist rebels.

Saibaba, 57, a professor of English who is paralysed waist down and uses a wheelchair, was arrested in May 2014 for being an alleged member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law declared “draconian” by several rights groups.

In March 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On Tuesday, Saibaba was acquitted along with four others of all charges by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. Pandu Narote, the sixth accused in the case, died in August 2022 awaiting the verdict.

This is Saibaba’s second acquittal. In October 2022, the Bombay High Court ordered his release, saying legal procedures were not properly followed during the trial. But within 24 hours, the Supreme Court cancelled the order, stating the charges against Saibaba and the other accused were “very serious” and required a new hearing.

“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, also 57, told Al Jazeera as she prepared to travel to Nagpur, 1,072km (666 miles) south of New Delhi to receive her husband.

She has reasons to be worried. Within hours of the court order, the government in Maharashtra state, which had