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"Kobad is moving towards window number four with the help of a walking stick. When he smiles on seeing us, I notice that one of his front teeth is missing.” So wrote Maoist sympathizer Kobad Ghandy’s (pictured) old Doon School friend Gautam Vohra in an email dated August 16, 2018 regarding his visit along with lawyer Rohit Thakur, Harshit Dhingra who is coordinating his legal battles and healer Meenal Madhukar to Hazaribagh jail in Jharkhand.
 "The window is covered by a wire mesh. One at his end. The other at ours. The distance between him and the visitors is further enhanced by an elongated cemented channel that goes the length of all the windows.
"We have to pick up phones to get across to Kobad. I am meeting him in prison again almost a decade after I established contact with him at Tihar (jail). There too a wire mesh divided us. But at Tihar I was alone with him in a room. At Hazaribagh jail, built in the 19th century by the British, we are standing outside, alongside the other prisoners, some four to a window, several shouting to get themselves heard.
"Since then (the meeting in Tihar), Kobad has been taken to several prisons across the country. He was relatively better treated in Andhra prisons as there he held the status of a political prisoner. In Hazaribagh, as elsewhere, he is a common criminal, an under trial for almost a decade. The irony is not a single charge under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) has been proved against him in all these years, except a minor charge or two of assuming a false identity.
"I am hoping to hear that he is better off in Hazaribagh jail than he was at Tihar. For his letters from the Delhi jail were full of incidents of denials of basic rights, even harassment. So, the four of us are perturbed to hear that conditions are much worse: he is routinely refused access to the outside world. His letters do not get posted, he is not allowed to use the phone, letters to him reach late if at all, the simplest of requests are ignored…
"The plan is to file a petition in the Supreme Court so that the State informs us about the cases and charges of terrorism that have been filed against him. If these are similar, as they have been under UAPA, they should be dismissed as the other courts have done. Hence Kobad will be spared the merry-go-round which he has had to go through so far. In fact as per the ‘confessional statements’ that Kobad is alleged to have made, he is next due for hearings in Orissa and Chhatisgarh. Aged 71, his health cannot take it.
"Kobad asks Thakur if he has filed the case on medical grounds. For unlike other prisons, the medical care in Hazaribagh jail is minimal. And Kobad is particularly concerned about his deteriorating prostate condition. Thakur informs him that he has not yet been able to get the report from the jail hospital doctor. He has also been unable to get access to the superintendent who can address the problems being faced by Kobad.
 "Madhukar talks to Kobad about reflecting positive energy. For, he has expressed only the negatives... Kobad listens with a smile to these new ideas. He is keen to get answers from Dhingra who is coordinating his legal battles. Kobad is told that this trick of the State has to be dealt with, the trick that as soon as he wins one case, the police whisk him away to be tried for another case in another state. That is how they have been able to prolong the case.
 "As we bid farewell to Kobad, expressing our solidarity, I see a resigned look on his face. We are keen to meet the superintendent Hamid Akhtar and send in our request. He is busy in another wing of the jail and does not respond. After lunch, we go to his residence; we are summoned to his verandah where he reclines under the fan even as swallows dash in and out. Before us is the vista of a large space dominated by a forest overlooking the lake. The trees have enormous girths, towering over the surroundings, probably planted by the (British) a century or two ago.”
 Akhtar gave Thakur "his direct number… Now access will not be an issue and hopefully Kobad’s immediate health problems can be attended to,” noted Vohra.