India persecutes human rights activist 'terrorist'

Dr Binayak Sen

This is the sort of thing I'd usually expect to see from China, Saudi Arabia or Burma, not India:

Twenty two Nobel laureates have called for the release of India's best-known "barefoot doctor" from jail, where he has languished for almost a year on terrorism charges. If convicted he faces the death sentence.

Binayak Sen, 58, an award-winning paediatrician who shot to prominence a quarter of a century ago by treating tribal communities for free in the forest region of India's Chhattisgarh state, was arrested last May charged with carrying notes from a member of a Naxalite Maoist rebel movement, who was his patient in prison.

Sen, a human-rights activist who frequently visited jails to treat inmates, protests his innocence. He is now accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation and conspiring to wage war against the government. He has been denied bail and his trial began last month.

Shame, India.