New Delhi: When Rebecca speaks of Vishal Singh, she does not begin with the alleged case he has been arrested for. Instead, she talks about his work, his passion for filmmaking, and giving voice and space to those in need.Singh, a documentary filmmaker and activist, had been working on a film about tribal distress and displacement before his arrest. He had earlier documented the lives of migrant workers and worked on films and projects concerning people at the margins of Indian society. Now, Rebecca says, he is struggling to see, eat and even sleep.Singh, who hails from Mathura, has been jailed at the district jail in Lucknow since June 29, 2025. He was arrested when he was in Delhi, by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), in connection with a conspiracy case over his alleged links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The accusation was that he supplied drones to “Naxalites”, and trained them to operate the equipment and keep watch on security forces’ activities in the forest areas of Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.More than a year later, his partner says his health has deteriorated to a point where she is worried if he is receiving the medical care he needs.“He was complaining to prison authorities for the last couple of months but no one listened. No tests were done. He was repeatedly telling prison doctors about his deteriorating health condition, nobody cared until things got out of hand,” Rebecca, his partner, tells The Wire.According to her, it was only after she began approaching the media, and people who knew Singh started raising the issue on social media, that prison authorities acted upon it.“Then jailer called him and sent him to Balrampur hospital,” she says.No medical care despite recordsA statement issued on August 5 by the Campaign Against State Repression (CASR), a civil liberties collective, also expressed concern over Singh’s deteriorating health and called for his immediate transfer to a government super-speciality hospital. The statement said the NIA Special Court in Lucknow had been informed about his medical condition.Rebecca said Singh had been admitted to the Jail OPD on July 23. But, according to her, no tests were conducted until August 13. “He was sick, puking, his head was spinning, having constant migraine. Couldn’t even digest water, couldn’t sleep for more than a week,” she says. The account raises questions not only about Singh’s present condition but about how his health was managed while he was in custody.Singh had a history of chronic migraines, which Rebecca says he had been suffering from since 2021. But, she adds, the frequency and severity of the migraines increased after his arrest.“He had been suffering from chronic migraine since 2021 but after the arrest his condition worsened,” she says.According to Rebecca, Singh began relying on Vasograin, a painkiller, to deal with the recurring migraines. She alleges that he subsequently developed very high blood pressure and that his creatinine level rose significantly. Singh also has a significant history of gastrointestinal problems. Rebecca said he underwent open surgery in 2020 after his intestine was punctured because of an ulcer.“He can’t digest dairy products, eggs or high-protein food,” she says.CASR, in its August 5 statement, said Singh had been surviving largely on medication and without adequate specialist care, proper nutrition or regular medical monitoring. The organisation said his condition had worsened following what it described as a stroke-like or seizure-related episode in March and that he was subsequently experiencing high blood pressure, vomiting, swelling, severe weakness, difficulty walking and serious loss of vision.Rebecca’s account matches this in one important aspect: she says the decline has been gradual and that prison authorities had been repeatedly informed. That makes the question of medical care particularly important.The NIA caseSingh is not a convicted prisoner. The case is still under trial. He is just an accused, awaiting the outcome of a criminal prosecution.Singh’s arrest came as part of the NIA’s investigation into what the agency frequently terms as the ‘Lucknow conspiracy case’. The case, registered as RC-01/2023/NIA/Lucknow, has been used by the agency against a number of activists and others across northern India. Rights groups have alleged that the investigation has increasingly been used to target people involved in labour, student, civil liberties and social movements.Singh is among those arrested in the case. The others include Ajay Singhal and Priyanshu Kashyap, both also lodged in Lucknow district jail.The NIA has its own account of why he is being prosecuted, and that account needs to be distinguished from the allegations made by Singh’s supporters. The agency alleges that the accused are connected to efforts to revive the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist)’s northern network. Singh denies wrongdoing, according to people close to him.Rebecca describes Singh as “very persistent, ambitious and empathic towards oppressed.” “He is a believer of Karl Marx,” she says.Singh, now 35, dropped out of engineering and spent several years doing theatre before moving towards documentary filmmaking, according to Rebecca. His latest project was about tribal distress and displacement. That work, however, has been interrupted since the imprisonment.Marriage plans also put on holdRebecca and Singh had also planned to marry last year. His arrest put those plans on hold as well. “We planned to do a court marriage last year but due to his arrest, we could not,” she says, “We will file for court marriage soon.” For Rebecca, the immediate concern is no longer when they will marry, but whether Singh will recover.The CASR has asked that Singh be moved to a well-equipped government hospital and examined by independent specialists. It has also appealed to the National Human Rights Commission, the Uttar Pradesh State Human Rights Commission and the Allahabad high court to intervene. The collective has framed Singh’s case as part of a wider concern over the treatment of seriously ill prisoners. However, his case also raises a more basic question about custodial responsibility.The central issue in Singh’s case is whether, while that process is underway, the state is doing enough to ensure that he does not become seriously or permanently ill in its custody.Rebecca says that the warning signs had been there for months.Now, she adds, they have become impossible to ignore.