Imprisoned revolutionary poet Varavara Rao tested positive for coronavirus this week (File)
Hyderabad:
The family of revolutionary poet-writer Varavara Rao, arrested and imprisoned for an alleged 2018 plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said that details of the health and condition of the 80-year-old woman were told to them been deliberately hidden.
They said details of a head injury before he was transferred from his prison cell to Nanavati Hospital in Mumbai, via the city’s JJ Hospital and St George Hospital, have not been released only through media sources.
Varavara Rao, who was housed in Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai, tested positive for COVID-19 this week.
“The family is not officially informed of any updates. Failure to share the health updates of a person in police custody with their family is illegal, unconstitutional and inhuman,” said his wife, Hemalata, and his daughters, in a joint statement.
The family alleged that even information about positive tests for the virus was not released until after he was transferred from prison to several hospitals.
All other information is only available through secondary sources, the family said; the news that he had been injured in the head, they said, was known to his friends in the media.
“In the absence of official and transparent information, speculation, rumors and half-truths are spreading and causing more concern for family and friends,” said Mr. Rao’s immediate family.
“Today’s news – that he suffered a head injury, whether at JJ Hospital or St George and discovered it when he arrived in Nanavati – made us very disturbed and worried about his safety and well-being, “they said.
“It is the right of the family to obtain official and transparent updates on their state of health, the line of treatment and the probable risks but the prison, the police and the health administrations concerned have not reached the family with this information, “they added.
Describing this as a “gross violation of family rights (and) gross negligence on the part of public institutions”, the family made the following demands to the government of Maharashtra.
- Allow a family member to help / assist since he would seemingly be unable to do anything on his own
- Immediately order the hospital / prison administration to provide regular, transparent and official updates, at least twice a day, on his state of health and his line of treatment
- Provide family with hospital contact from which to obtain information
- Make all of their medical records accessible to the family
- Remove barriers and allow the judicial process to issue regular or provisional bail for health, age and COVID-19 reasons so that he can be treated in a family-friendly hospital
Varavara Rao and nine other activists were arrested in the 2018 affair between Elgar Parishad and Maoist, who was initially interrogated by Pune police and then transferred to the NIA.
The case concerned alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune on December 31, 2017, which police said sparked violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial.
Police also claimed that the conclave was organized by people with suspected Maoist connections.
Varavara Rao, who headed “Veerasam”, an association of revolutionary writers, firmly denied these allegations. He said the five arrested were working for the good of the oppressed.
