Ex-DU Professor GN Saibaba passes away months after acquittal in alleged Maoist link case

NEW DELHI: Former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba passes away at the age of 58. He breathed his last at Hyderabad’s Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) hospital due to ill health, as per reports. Several academics have taken to social media to mourn the sudden death of the professor.

In 2014, Saibaba, who was working as an associate professor in the English department of DU’s Ram Lal Anand College, was arrested for alleged links with Maoists. He was 90% disabled and a wheelchair user.

After spending 14 months in Nagpur central jail, Mumbai High Court had granted him bail for six months in July 2015 for his deteriorating health condition. He went back in December.

“In April 2016, the Supreme Court granted him bail which allowed him to seek treatment in Delhi but had to return again. He was released from the prison on Thursday after the Bombay High Court's Nagpur bench acquitted him on March 5, 2024. He had been acquitted in 2023 but the Supreme Court had set that order aside,” as per reports.

Also read ‘I was treated like the biggest terrorist in the world’: GN Saibaba

In March this year, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) demanded the reinstatement of professor GN Saibaba in his position at Ram Lal Anand College and to provide compensation for the years of service he lost.

Poet and novelist, Meena Kandasamy, wrote: “It feels unreal, even unthinkable to exercise the past tense to write of you, comrade. You are a living flame. Your spirited fight, your strong will that did not shatter under the most cruel state oppression, your faith in the power of the working people -- this will remain your indelible legacy.”

“When I met you earlier this year in April, it felt like I was meeting a friend from forever. We discussed literature, IWE, the postcolonial novel, and what it means to be Bahujan within Indian academia. You laughed at how little I ate. You wore your suffering incredibly lightly--so casually that we felt doubly enraged at what the Indian state had inflicted upon you. Never did I realise that this was going to be my last ever meeting with you,” she added.