Indian public health expert and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen has been freed, after the Supreme Court granted him bail (løsladelse mod kaution) last week, reports BBC online Tuesday.
Dr Sen was released from a prison in the central state of Chhattisgarh on the condition that he would surrender his passport and attend court whenever he was summoned. In December a court in Chhattisgarh sentenced him to life in prison for helping Maoist rebels. Mr Sen has denied the charges.
The lower court in Chhattisgarh had found him guilty of carrying messages and setting up bank accounts for the rebels, who are active in large parts of India. Last week, the Supreme Court gave no reason for granting bail to Dr Sen, saying that Mr Sen “may be a sympathiser [of Maoists] but it did not make him guilty of sedition (tilskyndelse til oprør)”.
Rights groups in India and abroad, along with 40 Nobel laureates, had called on the government to free him.
Dr Sen, a trained paediatrician, says he does not support the Maoists. A senior member of the local unit of a leading Indian human rights group, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, he worked with tribal people in Chhattisgarh.
Dr Sen has been awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights for his services to poor and tribal communities.
His efforts in public health programmes helped to bring down the infant mortality rate in the state as well as reduce deaths caused by diarrhoea and dehydration, local doctors say.
He has also expressed concern over rising inequality in India despite the economic boom.
