‘Was sure I would be cleared of all charges’: Acquitted after decade in jail, ex-journalist ponders future

‘Was sure I would be cleared of all charges’: Acquitted after decade in jail, ex-journalist ponders future

At 65 years of age, former journalist Prashant Rahi is thinking about his career options. Cleared of all charges after fighting legal battles for around 17 years, he says he’s not yet ready to retire.

An IIT-BHU alumnus and engineer by training, Rahi has had three stints in prison between 2007 and 2024. He had been booked in two cases, spent over a decade in jail, and has now been cleared of all charges in both.

On September 1, 2013, police from Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli arrested Rahi from Raipur in Chhattisgarh. He was accused of being a member of the banned CPI (Maoist) and was booked under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act along with former DU teacher G N Saibaba and others.

Rahi said he was in Raipur at the time to meet a lawyer regarding legal assistance to a woman booked in Bilaspur.

On March 5, the Bombay High Court acquitted all those accused in the case. Upon release, Rahi went back to his home in Mumbai.

After his September 2013 arrest, Rahi was first lodged in Nagpur jail, where he was kept with those facing trial in Naxal cases. “There were some 40-50 people in that barrack… People came there seeking assistance with their cases, and wanting books to read. Everyone was engaged in some constructive activity. I helped translate books in Hindi on politics, history, economy. Some arranged skits,” he said. He was later shifted to the high security anda cell for three months.

In 2017, when he was convicted along with the other accused in the case, he was out on bail. He spent the next six years in jail.

Sent to Amravati Central Prison, Rahi said there, too, he was lodged in the anda cell, which has 15 separate rooms, meant for one prisoner each.

He said he spent the initial months reading books and learning Urdu from another prisoner while teaching him English in return. Later, he developed health complications, suffering severe abdominal pain after eating. He said he survived months eating just biscuits and was subsequently admitted to a hospital in 2022 after his daughter Shikha approached the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. He remained in hospital for seven weeks, but on his return, he again fell ill.

“I was sure that I would be cleared of all charges…but the issues in jail caused my health to deteriorate,” he said.

Reminiscing on his time studying engineering in Banaras, Rahi said he was focused entirely on academics at the time and had been working on developing a model for an electric vehicle. After his graduation, he joined a students’ movement and also worked with a peasants’ movements in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

He worked as an engineer at a plant for a few years and later moved to Dehradun, and in 1994, he began working as a correspondent for The Statesman newspaper. There, he wrote on the movement for a separate state of Uttarakhand, which was taking shape around the same time. He participated in the movement as well, and resigned from the paper in 2001, working fulltime on various issues faced by the people of the newly formed state.

In 2007, he was arrested in his first case, accused of being a member of a Maoist group. In 2022, he was acquitted in the case.

“It is not about a particular political party, but the state’s interest in giving a free hand to those who have their eyes on the country’s resources. Hence, no criticism or dissent is tolerated,” he said.

He said the Elgaar Parishad case, where 16 activists, lawyers and professors were booked for alleged links to Naxals, came into being on the back of his and the others’ conviction in 2017. “Police officers in our case threatened to teach our lawyer, Surendra Gadling, a lesson. He is now an accused in the Elgaar Parishad case,” Rahi said.

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