Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on March 5 acquitted former DU professor G.N. Saibaba and sets aside his life sentence.
Gokalkonda Naga Saibaba, 55, is a former professor at Delhi University’s Ram Lal Anand College and was terminated from service by the college in March 2021. The college had suspended him in 2014 when the activist-academic was arrested in Delhi for having alleged Maoist links.
In February 2017, a sessions court in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district convicted Saibaba and five others for having connections with and being “active members” of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), described by the police and the court order as a front for CPI(M). While Saibaba and four others were sentenced to life imprisonment, the sixth accused was given a 10-year term.
The allegations against Saibaba were that he was “arranging” meetings of two other accused- former Jawaharlal Nehru University student Hem Mishra and former journalist Prashant Rahi with “underground members” of CPI(M) and RDF.
