Every day, Jameela Ibrahim worries about a very sick and aged man who defended the rights of the downtrodden before being arrested under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, branded a Maoist and locked up in jail without bail.
It’s not the 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy whom this retired plantation labourer from a remote Kerala village has in mind.
Advertisement
The 63-year-old school dropout knows very little about the Ranchi-based Jesuit and tribal rights activist who died in National Investigation Agency (NIA) custody on July 5, waiting for bail in the Elgaar Parishad terrorism case. She, however, says she knows all about how the anti-terror law can be invoked to silence dissent.
Father Stan Swamy, who died aged 84 in Mumbai on Monday, was a Jesuit priest with a Marxian understanding of society and its problems that he imparted to thousands of youths while campaigning for tribal rights for over five decades.
Stanislaus Lourduswamy, which was his real name, was best known for his championing of the Adivasi cause in Jharkhand but hailed from Tamil Nadu.
Advertisement
He was born on April 26, 1937, in Trichy and went to St Joseph’s School, where he was so deeply inspired by the work of the Jesuit priests that he decided to join the order.
He began pursuing religious studies in May 1957 and committed himself to the cause of the poor and downtrodden.
Father Stan Swamy, severely ill and at 84 the eldest prisoner in a case accusing rights activists of Maoist links, passed away in a Mumbai hospital on Monday while waiting for bail.
The announcement of the Parkinson’s patient’s death came during his bail hearing in Bombay High Court.
Advertisement
The court was also due to hear the Ranchi-based Jesuit and tribal rights defender’s plea challenging provisions of the anti-terror Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which many activists in India and abroad have termed a draconian law and under which bail is a rarity.
Stanislaus Lourduswamy was among 16 people arrested in the Elgaar Parishad case, an investigation into alleged Maoist links to an Ambedkarite event on December 31, 2017, that was followed by caste clashes the next day that claimed one life.
Father Stan Swamy, the 83-year-old jailed priest, has been selected for an award honouring the late Mukundan C. Menon, journalist and founder of the human rights organisation People’s Union for Civil Liberties.
The award, which includes a cash prize of Rs 25,000 and a citation, “is in recognition of people’s struggle for democratic and human rights of Adivasis led by Father Stan Swamy”, the award organisers have written, according to sources close to the arrested Jesuit priest.
Sources said the award would be sent to Swamy at Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai, where the Parkinsonism patient has been lodged following his arrest by the anti-terror agency NIA from his Ranchi home on October 8.