SEVEN YEARS after his incarceration and TWO YEARS after actually having been granted bail which was rendered meaningless (after the National Investigation Authority did its perverse number on it), the Supreme Court grants bail to Mahesh Raut for a mere six weeks on medical grounds.
He was 31 when he was arrested, the youngest accused in the Bhima Koregaon case. He is now 38. Almost an entire third decade of his life wiped out for crimes that reside entirely in the state's ghastly imagination.
The reason I underline the years in every post I make on our activists is because it's important to understand and process these years from the vantage point of our own lives.
Think about where you were and what you were doing seven years ago and the losses and gains you have made in life from thereon. Those are the years Mahesh Raut, Umar Khalid, Jyoti Jagtap, Sharjeel Imam, Surendra Gadling, Gulfisha Fatima and so many others have spent looking at the four walls of their cells. Time didn't stop for them, but it's like a big hole popped up where there was supposed to be life in all its shades. Friends, opportunities, laughter, heartbreak, fulfilment, happy occasions, sad moments, the very privilege of existing; all of it snuffed out because they branded you with a label that you couldn't defend yourself against, regardless of your innocence.
And now, Mahesh has been laid low by Rheumatoid Arthritis. All of 38 and struck by an ailment that normally creeps up on people in their middle ages.
Could this have been triggered by his unforgiving stint in the prison? We don't know that for sure.
But here's what we do know.
RA is primarily an autoimmune disease influenced and triggered by (amongst other factors such as genetic and hormonal) "stress" itself. Psychological stress can activate the immune system's inflammatory response, which plays a key role in RA's progression and the severity of its symptoms. Even bare minimum research on the subject will tell you that "...hostile and highly stressful environment in prisons may contribute to more frequent or severe flare-ups of RA symptoms among those already predisposed or diagnosed with the condition."
In sum, the systemic cruelty didn't just rob Mahesh of his best years it may even have potentially had a hand in inducing a condition that comes with lifelong complications.
But then why is it surprising?
We must remember after all that we lost Father Stan Swamy and Prof GN Saibaba under equally hostile conditions (the latter was marginally lucky to breathe the sweet air of freedom just months before his passing).
The six weeks Mahesh Raut will get to spend in the company of his friends and family to treat his arthritis would make his return to prison way more painful eventually. But who could argue with the fact that the real disease here is not in his body, but in the system that made him sick in the first place.