I saw firsthand how callous prison officials and their negligence led to Stan Swamy’s death

Editor’s note: Father Stan Swamy and Arun Ferreira were among the 16 members of civil society – lawyers, professors, poets – who had been arrested under anti-terror laws in a case related to caste violence in Bhima Koregaon village outside Pune in 2018. It is also known as the Elgar Parishad case – the name of a meeting held to commemorate the role of Dalit soldiers in a battle in 1818 in defeating the army of the Peshwa, who had the reputation for being casteist.

The government claims that the 16 people arrested had conspired to instigate the violence and other acts of terror across the country. But since then, independent researchers have produced technical reports alleging that the evidence being marshalled against them had been planted on electronic devices by hackers.

Ferreira was incarcerated along with Swamy in the prison hospital. He has been now released on bail but one of the conditions disallows him from commenting about the case in the media.

“This is not a natural death, but the institutional murder of a gentle soul,” reads the statement by the family members of the people accused in the Elgar Parishad case that was released immediately after Father Stan Swamy’s death on July 5,...

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