AsiaHuman rights in IndiaFather, who art in prisonAn 84-year-old activist perishes awaiting trialSlow justice may be no justice, but a slowly unfolding tragedy remains no less a tragedy.When police charged Father Stan Swamy with terrorism and threw him in jail last October, friends of the Jesuit priest and human-rights activist feared for his health. They were right to worry.Prison wardens denied Father Stan, as he was known, in his 80s and shaking from Parkinson's disease, the use of a straw and sippy-cup from which to drink water until the press raised a fuss.Judges turned down repeated pleas for bail, even as his health declined and India entered a second, ferocious wave of covid-19 in the spring.They insisted that since he was charged under special terrorism laws, this frail old man with no criminal record, who had devoted his life to helping remote tribal peoples, must somehow represent a danger to the republic.In May Father Stan, now unable to feed himself or walk, was finally allowed to visit a private hospital.Doctors promptly diagnosed covid-19. Soon he was on a ventilator.
