‘They were kind to me’: How political prisoner Binayak Sen was treated in jail by fellow inmates

Binayak Sen completed his MBBS from Christian Medical College in Vellore with distinction, and he chose to stay back in India to make a difference, despite his father’s wish to send him to the United Kingdom.

He completed an MD in Paediatrics from Vellore and then joined JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) as an Associate Fellow as he desired to study for a PhD in public health. He left his academic position and joined the TB Research Centre and Hospital run by the Friends’ Rural Centre at Hoshangabad (MP). Thereafter, he went to Chhattisgarh, where he joined Shankar Guha Niyogi, a trade unionist. Dr Sen worked with the mine workers and their families at the captive mines of the Bhilai Steel Plant at Dalli Rajhara and Nandini, and later in the 1990s with the daily wage labourers in factories at Bhilai and Raipur. He helped set up a health centre for the mine workers at Dalli Rajhara, which was run by the workers themselves. It grew into a 25-bed hospital and was called Shaheed Hospital. He then left Dalli Rajhara to join his wife, Dr Ilina Sen in Raipur to start an NGO called Rupantar.

On April 13, 2006, then-Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, stated…

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