Church leaders have condemned an Indian court order to jail for five months a well-known social activist at the center of a 23-year-old libel suit. Medha Patkar, a renowned human rights activist, was sentenced by a metropolitan court in the national capital New Delhi on July 1 in a case filed by the current Delhi Lieu-tenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena in 2001.
The court directed Patkar to pay 1 million Indian rupees (some US$12,000) in compensation to Saxena, a leader of the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party of Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi whose administration is known for targeting social activists, writers, students, lawyers, and journalists. “Convicting Medha Patkar is a travesty of justice,” activist priest Fr Cedric Prakash told on July 2. After all, it is a 23-year-old case, Prakash noted. In 2000, Saxena, who headed an NGO in the western Indian state of Gujarat, published an advertisement against Patkar’s Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a movement that opposed the construction of dams over the Narmada River in western India. After the advertisement, Patkar issued a statement alleging that Saxena was “mortga-ging the people of Gujarat and their resources before Bill Gates.” Subsequently, Saxena filed a libel suit against her in a Gujarat court in 2001. The case was transferred to Delhi in 2003 on the orders of the Indian Supreme Court. Prakash said that Patkar “spoke the truth,” and her statement does not constitute defamation. “The conviction order reeks of vindictiveness,” said the Jesuit priest, who is based in Ahmadabad, the capital of Gujarat, Modi’s home state. Patkar came to prominence with the protest against the Sardar Sarovar Project, a terminal dam on the Narmada River in Gujarat that is due to be completed in 2025. According to the government, the project will provide drinking water to 30 million people. However, Patkar said it would displace more than 100,000 people in 245 villages.