Mumbai: Even as JJ hospital authorities said that 81-year-old poet Varavara Rao’s condition is stable, his family said that while there was absolutely no official information forthcoming from the Taloja prison authorities, they managed to get the jail authorities on phone and were told that it is not the jail’s responsibility to inform the family.
Hospital authorities said that Rao is undergoing blood tests, MRI and CT scan and his condition is stable. He is admitted to the neurology department.
“At around 5 pm, we called the jail and someone on the line said that it is not the prison’s responsibility to inform the family and is that of the NIA whom they have informed,” said Rao’s nephew N Venugopal. But they did not hear from the NIA either, he said.
Rao’s daughter Pavana said there had been no information officially and the family has been relying on information from well-wishers and media reports, which sometimes only tend to confuse them and make them more anxious.
The family is apprehensive that the hospital may hurriedly discharge Rao, like they say the hospital did when he was admitted there in May end. Rao was discharged on June 1 and his bail plea hearing was scheduled the next day. “His sodium levels had not reached the minimum and he was discharged,” Pavana says.
Rao was taken to JJ hospital on Monday and has been there at least since afternoon. On Monday night, the hospital said he was brought for checking his medical fitness and doctors are checking his various health parameters.
The hospital visit and subsequent admission happened the same day that an urgent writ petition in the Bombay High Court filed by their advocate R. Sathyanarayan seeking directions to the prison authorities to submit a detailed report along with medical papers of the treatment and course of action followed by them after Rao was discharged in early June after he fell unconscious in jail and was admitted in JJ hospital in May end.
PTI
Congress Leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention for the release of Telugu poet Varavara Rao who was arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case in Maharashtra.
Rao at 81 years of age "cannot be a threat to one of the strongest countries" in the world, Chowdhury said.
"A person of 81 years of age has been languishing in jail for years without knowing his offence, now he has been mentally disoriented, having no medical assistance.
"You may please intervene into this matter and save his life, otherwise our future generations will not forgive us (sic)," he wrote in his letter to Modi.
Rao and nine other activists were arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case, which was initially probed by the Pune police and later transferred to the National Investigation Agency in January this year.
The case pertains to the alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which, the police claimed, triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial located on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.
The poet was admitted to J J Hospital in Mumbai on Monday night after he complained of dizziness. PTI
