New Delhi: A group of women from Kandhamal, Odisha, is in the national capital seeking justice for their husbands who are languishing in jail for allegedly murdering a Hindu religious leader eight years ago.
“Our men are innocent. They could never have committed such professional murders,” said Nilandri Nayak, wife of one of the seven men given life term after convicted of killing Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and his four associates on August 23, 2008.
The wives of six convicts on March 3 released a book on the case written by journalist Anto Akkara at a function in New Delhi’s Constitutional Club.
Veteran journalist Kuldeep Nayar, Hindu social reformer Swami Agnivesh and political leaders such as Oscar Fernandes and Annie Raja attended the function where the women narrated their sufferings.
In 2013, a Fast Track Court awarded their husbands life term and their appeal in the Odisha High Court has been pending since October 2014.
The book, “Cry of the Oppressed,” attempts to prove that the men were falsely implicated as part of a sinister game plan hatched by Hindu radical groups. The convicted men are members of Christian sects.
Addressing the function, Akkara said the men were convicted “despite hardly any convincing evidences being produced against them in the Fast Tract Court.”
He appealed to the Chief Justice of India and other constitutional authorities in the country to “end the travesty of justice and release the seven innocent.”