India's 21st-century dungeons
Government is tardy with revealing jail data, much less that which will expose inhumanity or state criminality
A little plastic hollow straw, much like the one you'd get with fresh tender coconut or cold drink at a roadside eatery, has gained much attention not just on the vagaries of the law of the land and its courts, but even more on the conditions in the prisons in India.
It took several weeks for 84-year-old Jesuit Father Stan Swamy--in prison as a mere suspect in a trumped-up conspiracy called the Bhima-Koregaon case--to get the plastic drinking straw, which he needs to take a sip of water or tea because his Parkinson's disease afflicted hands can bare hold the cup. He is not yet an undertrial, and certainly not a convict.