In the world’s biggest democracy, Machang Lalung has finally being released from jail, after spending 54 of his 77 years behind bars without any trial. The de facto sentence is even longer than some so-called ‘life sentences’ in the west.
In 1951, at the young age of 23, with all the dreams a young man has, he was arrested in his village of Silsangi for "causing grievous hurt". Even if he had been found guilty on that charge, he would at most have been jailed for 10 years. Instead he was incarcerated for 5 and a half times that, without any trial.
Because there was no evidence to support that charge, within a year of his arrest he was transferred to a psychiatric institution. Sounds like Communist Russia, doesn’t it, putting disagreeable people the state didn't like into mad houses, where the aim was probably to make that unfortunate but sane person mad.
But in fact, approximately 15 years after he was first apprehended, authorities at the psychiatric institution certified him as fully fit and decided to release him. But police then sent him to another jail.
Why?
Could it be there is or was a policeman out to either punish him or prevent him from ever being released. For the second possibility, the sad romantic in me suggests that could have been a woman involved in the police reprehensible detention. An Indian Count of Monte Cristo but with a failed ending.
His family, of those still alive, has forgotten about him entirely.
In the end, wouldn’t it be more kind to keep such a man in prison and let him die there in familiar surroundings, an environment that he lived within for 54 years. What can he could outside in an alien world he knows nothing about, and which has forgotten him?
Truly this is one of the most sad story I have heard for a long long time.
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