Mumbai: On July 28, 2020, Hany Babu M.T., an associate professor of English at Delhi University, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case. But, as he recounts, his freedom was curtailed long before that physical arrest.During a raid on his Delhi home in September 2019, police seized his computers and devices, effectively erasing nearly two decades of painstaking academic work—his teaching materials, writings, and research on language policy and linguistic structures. “My writings, my research had simply vanished. And that hurt my life much deeper,” Babu says. In the months that followed, his daily commute home from the university was shadowed by dread. “I would think, ‘Today is the day, the police will arrive today’,” he says.Babu was a member of the Committee for the Defence and Release of G.N. Saibaba, a fellow Delhi University professor who endured prolonged incarceration in a Maoist-related case, was eventually acquitted of all charges, and tragically died shortly after his release. His involvement in the campaign for Saibaba’s freedom, Babu says, “prepared” him in some measure for the harsh realities of prison life. “Otherwise,” he says, “I would have been in for much worse shocks.”Granted bail by the Bombay High Court earlier this month after more than five years of incarceration, Babu is now rebuilding his life in Mumbai—a city he previously knew only through occasional vacations with his wife, Jenny Rowena, and daughter, Farzana. Confined to the city as a condition of his release, he has settled into a rented home in Navi Mumbai, and is taking tentative steps toward reclaiming the everyday rhythms disrupted by years of incarceration.When The Wire met Babu and his family last week, they were still hopping hotels across the city, trying to secure stable accommodation. As a Muslim facing trial under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), finding a place in Mumbai has proven difficult.Yet his ongoing travails pale in comparison to the hardships he endured in jail. His arrest coincided with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave. “Flights and other transport had just resumed, but the infection was still spreading,” Babu recalls.By the time he was arrested, the investigation had changed hands. The case, investigated by the local Pune police until the end of 2019, was now handed over to the NIA.As soon as Babu was arrested, he was placed under quarantine. “The quarantine period is usually two weeks, but in my case, it dragged on for three because a senior prison official was on leave,” he shares. This extended period meant solitary confinement in a small cell, with no interaction or opportunity to step outside. Yet, during the pandemic, it paradoxically offered a shield against the rampant spread of the virus within overcrowded jails.Babu is quick to note, however, that his experience was far less severe than that of fellow accused Gautam Navlakha, who arrived earlier that year. Navlakha was quarantined in a makeshift facility at a civic school originally designed for schoolchildren but repurposed for prisoners. “It was a living hell,” Navlakha would say to Babu. “I was spared that horror also because Gautam had made a lot of noise and petitioned the courts up to the Supreme Court.”In the months following his arrival at Taloja Central Jail, Babu witnessed the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic unfold behind bars. For an extended period, no systematic testing was conducted inside the facility. When tests finally began, untrained prisoners were tasked with administering RT-PCR swabs, he recounts. “They lacked proper training, and tests conducted in jail would invariably return negative. But the moment someone was taken outside for treatment, they would test positive,” Babu says.Also read: Top Investigating Officer Admits Elgar Parishad Event ‘Had No Role’ in Bhima Koregaon ViolenceAlthough prison administration falls under the Home Ministry, medical staffing is drawn from the Health Department. Prisoners’ rights experts and NGOs working in prisons have for long flagged the health department’s refusal to prioritise the health of those incarcerated. Babu notes that, beyond a handful of doctors, much of the hands-on care was provided by fellow prisoners. “There is not a single paramedic staff. Nurses and ward boys were selected from among us. Someone would claim prior experience working in a hospital, and they would be assigned the role,” he explains.The doctors in prisons, he reveals, are mostly Ayurvedic but would administer allopathic medicines. “It is a common joke among prisoners that anyone can become a doctor here. All you need to know are four or five medicines: paracetamol, cetirizine, combiflam, and medicines for gas. For any ailment, you will be given one of these.”In May 2021, Babu fell sick. He had all the symptoms of COVID-19 but no fever. The tests conducted inside the jail showed negative. His co-accused, Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, also fell ill around the same time. He too had tested negative in the prison. He was kept in the hospital ward inside Taloja jail, where Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira—also co-accused in the case—took turns taking care of Swamy. On the court’s intervention, Swamy was moved to a private hospital in Mumbai, where he passed away on July 5, 2021. His death, his lawyers and activists claimed, was the direct outcome of inadequate medical attention and negligence by prison staff.Visitors arrive at the 201st Anniversary of Koregaon Bhima Victory Pillar at Bhima Koregaon Village near Pune city. Photo: Manvender Vashist/PTIBabu’s health deteriorated and soon he developed an eye infection. “But I was ferried to Vashi Civil Hospital only as an outpatient,” he says. What Babu endured is symptomatic of a bigger problem ailing prisons. Most state-run hospitals don’t have a dedicated ward for those incarcerated, and police guards escorting them have no space to even rest, pushing the hospitals to send prisoners back as outpatients.Babu was no ordinary prisoner. His arrest, like that of the 15 other academics and human rights defenders in the case, had triggered protests and campaigns worldwide. “Yet this was the treatment meted out to me,” he says. “It is infinitely harder for ordinary prisoners to even get the system to notice them, let alone treat them humanely.” He highlights the bitter irony in calling prisons a “correctional service”. “If anyone needs correction, it is the prison authorities themselves. They must first recognise that those behind bars are human beings above all else,” he says.As Babu continued to suffer, Rowena, his wife and also a professor at Delhi University, moved the Bombay High Court seeking immediate medical care. Heads rolled, and Babu was moved to JJ Hospital. The eye infection, which was earlier thought to be mucormycosis (commonly known as “black fungus”), turned out to be orbital cellulitis—an infection, he says, that is found only among tribal communities in the remotest parts where medical care is not available. “The doctor here asked to get me hospitalised immediately. She said any further delay, and the infection would have affected my brain.”In this case, due to the political nature of the Elgar Parishad case and the ensuing public support, Babu received an unusual “privilege. .“I was not handcuffed like other prisoners. Otherwise, even in such a serious condition, prisoners would be handcuffed to their hospital beds,” he says.Also read: Hackers-for-Hire, Govt’s Media Control: Seven Takeaways From Studying the Arrests of the BK-16Once he tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Babu was moved out of JJ Hospital and shifted to GT Hospital. “I was sure I was going to die here,” he says, fear still evident on his face.By then, Rowena, through Babu’s lawyer Yug Mohit Chaudhry, had moved an application in the Bombay High Court, and he was soon transferred to a private hospital for further treatment. “I would keep finding ways to call Jenny and ask her to save me. I would have been dead but for her,” he says.During his time in jail, Babu witnessed people falling sick but never any deaths. “Deaths always happen on the way to the hospital. No death is shown inside jail,” he points out. And these deaths, too, are never made known to other prisoners.Deaths in prisons are a grave reality in India. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows around 1,800–2,000 such deaths annually. These deaths are invariably due to lack of adequate health care, but the data recorded shows them as “natural deaths”. Treatable illnesses go ignored for months and then finally people collapse, Babu says. Corruption, he says, is so rampant that unless the palms of prison officials are greased, one doesn’t get a chance to see a doctor or even get a court visit.Time and space work in a very different way inside prison, he says. The monotony of everyday life gets to you and you don’t realise time is passing. “One month goes by… what were you doing? Nothing.”Days and time blur together in jail. Babu explains how the notion of a week is tied to the activities scheduled inside prison. “For four years, the [prison] superintendent’s weekly rounds were scheduled on Fridays, and then suddenly they were changed to Thursdays. After that, many prisoners, including me, would lose track of the days. I would invariably think the day following the superintendent’s round was a Saturday,” he says. And then there were “total bandis”, complete lockdowns, when the barracks would be shut by 1 p.m., as opposed to the usual closing time of around 5 p.m. Holidays and occasions that meant vacations for the outside world actually brought stricter restrictions and greater curtailment of movement inside the jail.During his imprisonment, Babu and his co-accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case waged numerous battles—not only for their own survival, but for the dignity of all prisoners. They fought for better food, adequate medical care and other basic rights, securing small but hard-won victories along the way.However, prison life was not entirely gloomy or hopeless. Babu, who had already earned a law degree to support his activism on the implementation of reservation policies for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), developed a deeper interest in the subject during his incarceration. “It was more from the constitutional law perspective. But now I have a deeper interest in procedural laws. What I would earlier reject as mere technical procedures, I now understand are the only way to ensure some safety under the law.” He now recognises that procedures are where the biggest violations actually happen.His articles, co-authored with fellow defendant and seasoned lawyer Surendra Gadling, examined the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act,1967, and its bail provisions through the critical lens of a legal expert. This, he says, has become his new area of exploration, one he intends to remain focused on.Also read: Why Hany Babu Writes From PrisonWriting in prison wasn’t easy, though. “I am the kind of person who reads a line and immediately looks for several books for reference. But that wasn’t possible inside jail. I would ask Jenny to send me material but by the time she would manage to send me material, weeks would pass.” Babu has several half-finished works which he intends to pursue now that he’s out of jail. Among them is his inquiry into how the Indian constitution and constitutions globally deal with language.Those booked in the Elgar Parishad case were kept in pairs in different ‘circles’. Taloja Central Jail has five circles and one hospital (also where trangender prisoners are lodged). One high security cell, where a few of them were kept for a brief period, has now been dismantled. “So, the long travel between the jail and court would be our time to discuss our next research and articles,” Babu says.The kind of academic work and interest Babu developed in these five years wouldn’t have happened but for his imprisonment, he says. “In some sense, incarceration did enrich my life,” he adds with a laugh. In an “ideal situation”, Babu adds, he would want to continue pursuing this legal work. “There is both personal interest and a dire need for such work,” he says.