Raipur:
Civil rights activist Dr Binayak Sen is set to be released from a jail in Raipur today.
Sen's release comes after the Supreme Court granted him bail last week, striking down charges of sedition levelled against him by the Chhattisgarh government. (
Read: No sedition; bail for Binayak, says Supreme Court)
He had been accused of colluding with Naxalites and sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of sedition.
(Read: Who is Binayak Sen?)The court had observed that there was no evidence against Sen and that no case of sedition was made out. At best, it said, he could be called a sympathizer but nothing beyond that. It left it to the satisfaction of the trial court concerned to impose conditions for his release on bail.
(Foreign Media on Binayak Sen)Sen, who is a vice-president of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), was accused of colluding with Naxals to establish a network to fight the state. He was charged with sedition and was convicted and sentenced along with Naxal ideologue Narayan Sanyal and Kolkata businessman Piyush Guha, to life imprisonment by a Chhattisgarh trial court.
The Chhattisgarh High Court had rejected his bail plea on February 10 and the 61-year-old had challenged that order in the Supreme Court.