54-year-old former professor GN Saibaba, arrested over alleged maoist links, acquitted

Mumbai: 54-year-old GN Saibaba, a wheelchair-bound former Delhi University professor, jailed for alleged Maoist links, has been acquitted by the Bombay High Court. Mr Saibaba and five others were convicted in 2017 by a sessions court.

Saibaba is paralysed from the waist down since suffering childhood. He was arrested in May 2014 over alleged links to Maoists. The high court had acquitted Mr Saibaba, who has a disability, on October 14, 2022, but the Supreme Court had set it aside, referring the case back to the high court for a fresh hearing.

Mr Saibaba, who is wheelchair-bound, is currently in Nagpur Central Jail. Saibaba was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for alleged links to Maoist leader Ganapathy.

In 2017, a sessions court in Gadchiroli had convicted Mr Saibaba and the others for alleged Maoist links and for indulging in activities amounting to waging war against the country.The court had held that Mr Saibaba had literature intended for circulation among underground Maoists at Gadchiroli and others, to incite violence.

He taught English literature at Ram Lal Anand College of Delhi University. Mr Saibaba had challenged the sessions court conviction before the Bombay High Court. A division Bench of Justices Vinay Joshi and Valmiki SA Menezes said it acquitted all the accused as the prosecution could not prove the case beyond reasonable doubt against them.