Hyderabad: Pandu Narote, one of the UAPA-accused arrested alongside ex-Delhi University professor GN Saibaba, passed away on Thursday, after a battle with an unknown illness, presumed to be either a serious infection or influenza.
33-year-old Narote was taken to the Nagpur GMCH hospital on Tuesday for reasons undisclosed to his family or lawyer. GN Saibaba’s wife Vasantha Kumari, who has been campaigning against her husband and his co-accused’s imprisonment, stated that Narote’s lawyer requested that he be shifted to the ICU ward but it was not implemented.
“It is due to the negligence of jail authorities his health, to the extent that the family did not know if he fell ill or not, that this tragedy had to happen,” said Vasantha.
Pandu was otherwise a healthy young man, and there was no intimation that his health started to severely deteriorate, she said.
Narote’s death comes after the appeal against the imprisonment reached the high court, a process that took over five years, and is still being processed. “There is a rampant neglect of prisoners’ health in the jail, that allows for such tragedies to happen,” said Vasantha.
Meanwhile, Saibaba is also reportedly facing several health issues in jail and falls unconscious in his cell frequently. He suffers from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (heart problem), hypertension, paraplegia, syphoscoliosis of the spine, acute pancreatitis, and gall-bladder stones among many other medical conditions.
A CT scan report has also indicated a cyst in the brain.
Pandu Narote was arrested in 2017 along with Delhi University professor GN Saibaba, Hem Mishra, Prashant Rahi, Mahesh Tirkey and Vijay Tirkey.
They were jailed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for alleged conspiracy, being a member of a terrorist gang or organisation and offences relating to supporting a terrorist organization.
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