Binayak's Reprieve _ Today's TOI Editorial

It was far more than just a matter of bail when the Supreme Court last Friday ordered the suspension of the life sentence that was being served by Binayak Sen. Its significance is not just due to the outrage that had been expressed across the world over the incarceration of a human rights and public activist working in the most backward areas of Chhattisgarh. Binayak Sen's plight served as an opportunity for the highest court of the land to acknowledge the anomalies in the sedition provision and the manner in which it has generally being misused to gag dissidence in our democracy.

As this newspaper reported in the run-up to the court hearing the sedition provision, which was inserted as Section 124A in the Indian Penal Code way back in 1870, is so arbitrary that Binayak Sen could well have been let off for the very same offence with just a fine. For, without a word of explanation, this colonial law provides three very different levels of punishment for those held guilty of sedition: life sentence, imprisonment up to three years or monetary penalty. The definition of sedition is also so vague that the Supreme Court was forced to rule in 1962 that this provision, in the wake of the constitutional guarantee of free speech, would have to be read down to deal only with those who allegedly incited violence against the state.

But, as evident from the experiences of Binayak Sen and numerous lesser-known victims around the country of this draconian provision, the Supreme Court's 1962 clarification has proved inadequate to safeguard against the misuse of the sedition law. It is therefore a welcome development that, subsequent to the order granting bail to Binayak Sen, law minister Veerappa Moily announced that the government would ask the Law Commission to review Section 124A IPC in order to recast the provision or scrap it altogether. The provocation was the oral observations made by the bench comprising Justice H S Bedi and Justice Chandramauli Prasad that Binayak Sen's sympathies for Maoists did not make him liable to sedition.

The importance of the corrective applied by the Supreme Court is all the more evident from the Chhattisgarh high court's failure to recognise glaring infirmities in the case, whether on the issue of conviction or on the quantum of sentence, despite delivering a 35-page order two months ago declining bail to Binayak Sen. The Supreme Court's intervention in this case is in line with its recent verdict that mere membership of a banned organisation was not a crime unless he was found to have committed violence. Binayak Sen's release should pave the way for his acquittal of the charge of sedition.