Shoma Sen was arrested on June 6, 2018, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for charges which include inciting violence, being involved in raising funds for the banned CPI (Maoist) party and harbouring its fugitive members.

Prof Sen is a highly vocal and committed women’s rights activist who has been involved with a wide range of social and political causes. She is the founding convener of the Committee Against Violence on Women (CAVW) and has participated in fact-finding missions on the implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur and on the sexual violence perpetrated by the Salwa Judum in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.

Prof Sen is also the former head of the Department of English at Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University. She has made significant academic contributions to the fields of postcolonial studies and women’s studies. Her academic writings have been published by journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She is very popular among her students and is known for her kind and encouraging demeanour. 

As a teacher of English, she is acutely aware of the elitist and exclusionary character of the language in India and her students report that she has always gone out of her way to try and make everyone in her class feel comfortable and confident, irrespective of how “well” they can speak. Her close engagement with issues of caste-based sexual violence and discrimination on the ground provided her with a critical lens through which to look at the writings of fellow Indian upper-caste feminists and critique their lack of understanding of the role of caste in the oppression of women.

Colleagues, friends and family members of Shoma Sen talk of how her commitment to social justice translates into extraordinary generosity and compassion in her day to day life. Sen chose to leave her birthplace and childhood home in Mumbai to settle in Nagpur because she wanted to escape her elite circles and work in a less developed region of her state. Her daughter Koel remembers how her mother always kept the doors of their home open for outsiders, often allowing young girls in need of financial and educational support to stay with them for months or years. 

Prof Sen’s arrest came in the wake of the Bhima-Koregaon anti-Dalit violence that followed the Elgar Parishad conference in which Sen had participated. The police held the conference responsible for the violence, even though there are conclusive reports of how Hindutva leaders of the area such as Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote — who were upset by the assertion of solidarity by Dalit-Bahujan groups  — had incited people to violence.

Recently Shoma Sen, who is 61 years old, filed for interim bail, stating that she was especially vulnerable to COVID-19 due to her history of health issues. The court rejected the plea and said that she could not be granted bail only because she was suffering from “some disease”. In the last few days, two other political prisoners, Akhil Gogoi and Varavara Rao have tested positive for COVID-19, raising concerns about the extent of the transmission of the virus in Indian jails and the need to decongest them and improve living conditions in order to protect prisoners. Under such circumstances, the continued imprisonment of Shoma Sen, along with all other political prisoners who have been incarcerated merely for daring to express their dissent against the state, is indefensible and inhumane. Sen must be released and all charges against her dropped immediately.

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