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Binayak Sen recalls fellow prisoners helping him during his time in jail: one young inmate cooked for him, and others did not judge him after learning the government had labelled him a “Naxal.” His account also describes solitary confinement and a difficult period of imprisonment, so the kindness he remembers is part of a mixed experience—not a claim that jail was benign.
What Sen says fellow inmates did for him
In an interview excerpt published by Scroll.in on January 15, 2025, Sen describes prisoners as kind and says they helped him get through his days. On arriving at Raipur Central Jail, he recalls that people were around him, that nobody initially recognised him, and that he was allowed to speak with people who treated him well. “Some of them were very kind to me,” he says.
A prisoner who cooked for him
Sen remembers a young inmate who “would cook food for me.” He says other prisoners later learned that he had been jailed for being a “Naxal,” as the government termed him. In Sen’s recollection, they did not judge him and instead helped him in jail.
Sen’s daughters also describe a person who looked after him during that period. In the excerpt, his daughter Pranhita identifies the young man as a prisoner serving a murder sentence. That detail is the family’s account as presented in the interview.
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A mixed account of imprisonment
Sen’s recollection is not one-dimensional. Asked about the physical and psychological effects of his jail terms, he says, “Jail was not only a negative experience.” He describes spending much of his time in a ward, except when he was kept in solitary confinement, and the excerpt also reports that he experienced post-traumatic disorder.
He separately recalls that jail staff were helpful and “hardly ever treated me badly.” Sen recounts an allegation that a senior police official urged jail staff to cooperate with the prosecution in securing a conviction, but says the staff did not follow that instruction. This is Sen’s account in the interview, not an independently established finding.
Why Sen was jailed, according to the excerpt
The excerpt says Chhattisgarh police arrested Sen on May 14, 2007, alleging links to Naxalites and that he acted as a courier between jailed leader Narayan Sanyal and businessman Piyush Guha. It reports that the Supreme Court granted him bail on May 25, 2009; that he was convicted with Sanyal and Guha on December 24, 2010; and that the court granted him bail again on April 15, 2011. His daughters describe the two custody periods as 2007–2009 and December 2010–April 2011. These dates and the account of the case are as presented in the excerpt; they are included here as context, not as an independent review of the legal record.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where this account comes from
The Scroll.in piece is an excerpt from Neeta Kolhatkar’s book The Feared: Conversations with 11 Political Prisoners, reproduced with permission from Simon and Schuster India and Yoda Press. Sen is a physician who worked in rural health and with mine workers in Chhattisgarh, helped establish Shaheed Hospital, and later started the NGO Rupantar with his wife, Ilina Sen.
The article presents Sen’s and his family’s recollections. It does not establish how common such treatment was for other prisoners or independently corroborate each incident. Its value here is as a first-person account of the help Sen says he received from fellow inmates, alongside the hardships he also describes.
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