The court finally said the criminal charges could not be proven, adding, “Writing cannot be seditious, and writers cannot be conspirators."
Published May 24, 2024 | 11:00 AM ⚊ Updated May 24, 2024 | 11:16 AM
From top left: Cherabandaraju (1944-1982), K V Ramana Reddy (1927- 1998), Tripuraneni Madhusudana Rao (1937-2004), M T Khan (1935-2014), M Ranganatham (1948-2020), P Varavara Rao (1940)
May 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the famous or infamous Secunderabad Conspiracy Case (1974-1989), perhaps the first-ever in the then Andhra Pradesh, or even the entire country, implicating writers as accused for their writings and speeches.
The first batch of arrests of the accused, ironically all writers—since the other accused were underground Naxalites who could not be apprehended—took place on 18 May 1974.
The case, known in legal corridors as The State Vs KG Satyamurthy and P Varavara Rao and others, had shown 46 accused, including six writers – Tripuraneni Madhusudan Rao, the then secretary of Viplava Rachayitala Sangham (popularly known as Virasam with its acronym – Revolutionary Writers’ Association), Cherabandaraju, K V Ramana Reddy and P Varavara Rao, executive members of RWA, as well as M T Khan and M Ranganatham, the publisher and editor, respectively of Pilupu, a fortnightly magazine along with prominent Naxalite activists including Kondapalli Seetaramaiah, Inguva Mallikarjuna Sharma, Barla Yadagiri Raju, Linga Vijayakumar and several revolutionary sympathisers.
In fact, this was not the first conspiracy case. The Government of Andhra Pradesh had the dubious distinction of manufacturing conspiracy cases even earlier, like the Parvatipuram Conspiracy Case and the Hyderabad Conspiracy case in 1970. Both cases involved revolutionary activists and sympathisers only.
With the Secunderabad Conspiracy Case, the police began the tradition of including writers and journalists in conspiracy cases. Thus, this case was certainly the first of its kind in post-colonial India for implicating writers, terming their writings, speeches, and freedom of expression as crimes. Perhaps this was the second case in the post-colonial Indian subcontinent, as Pakistan accused Faiz Ahmad Faiz in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case in 1951 itself and even convicted him.
The police arrested all the accused writers except K V Ramana Reddy on 18 May in Hyderabad, Warangal, and Tirupati. A few weeks later, K V Ramana Reddy produced himself before the court.
The origin and trajectory of the case are worth studying. Ever since Virasam was formed on 4 July 1970, the government began to extend its ongoing repression of the Naxalite movement to this writers’ organization on the pretext that these are “literary Naxalites” (note the similar nomenclature in “urban Naxals” five decades later!).
It banned March, a poetry anthology released on the occasion of Virasam’s formation, and arrested its publisher for sedition. Jhanjha, another poetry collection that came out at the first conference of Virasam in October 1970, also suffered a ban. Three Virasam poets, Cherabandaraju, Jwalamukhi, and Nikhileshwar, were arrested in August 1971 under the Preventive Detention Act.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court (Justice O Chinnapa Reddy and Justice ADV Reddy) struck down the imprisonment, saying, “Opinions cannot be suppressed. Nobody can be detained for possessing opinions and expressing them.”
Then, in October 1973, the police arrested Cherabandaraju, Varavara Rao and M T Khan under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), and the AP High Court (Justice A Sambasiva Rao) struck down the detention by almost repeating the earlier judgment, saying “nobody can be arrested for writing”. However, there was a qualification in this later verdict. The judge added, “unless there is a connection with a crime”.
This judgment came out in November 1973, and within the next six months, the Andhra Pradesh police worked overtime to make “connections” between writings or speeches and crimes! They dug out several criminal cases, tried or under trial in Khammam, Warangal, Nalgonda, and Medak districts between October 1971 and May 1974, and manufactured a methodical connection between each crime as the result of a conspiracy these writers hatched through a poem, an essay, or a speech.
Thus, the Secunderabad Conspiracy Case was actually a compilation of previous cases. All those cases had undergone the judicial process. So, the police introduced a new element of conspiracy attributed to the writings and speeches. That allowed them to charge writers with conspiracy and sedition and even with overthrowing the state, snatching and collecting arms, attacks on police stations, murder, attempted murder, dacoity, arson, unlawful assembly, etc.
They faced the following IPC Sections: 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war against the government), 121-A (conspiracy to wage war against the government), 122 (collecting arms with intent to wage war), 123 (concealing to facilitate design to wage war), 124-A (sedition), 302 (murder), 395 (dacoity), and 397 (dacoity to cause death or grievous injury).
Cherabandaraju’s poem ‘Mallee vastunnaayi mana ooriki’ published in the March 1972 issue of Srjana became “provocative and inflammable”. So did his story, Chirajeevi, published in Ippudu Veestunna Gaali, a short story compilation published by Virasam. Tripuraneni Madhusudan Rao and K V Ramana Reddy became accused of their poems and speeches. Publishing poems, songs, and essays in Pilupu and speeches at various meetings turned MT Khan and M Ranganatham into accused persons.
The case trial lasted 15 years and included several twists and turns. At least six judges changed during that time. The prosecution initially listed 550 witnesses, but the defence argued that increasing the number would only delay the trial.
K G Kannabiran and his team, who fought the case for 15 years, argued against trying a case twice and sought to exclude from the list those witnesses already examined in various courts of law in most of the cases. Finally, in 1985, the Andhra Pradesh High Court accepted this argument, restricted the list of witnesses for examination in this case to 185, and directed the trial court to close the case “within three months.”
However, the trial court took another four years and finally acquitted all the writers except Cherabandaraju, who died of brain cancer in 1982. They withdrew the case against him a few months before his death. Some others acquitted included those who stood trial.
P V Rama Sarma, Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge, held that the prosecution could not prove any of the criminal charges and categorically said, “Writing cannot be seditious, and writers cannot be conspirators”. The police split cases of some accused—those not arrested and others not arrested but killed in “encounters”.
Out of the six accused and acquitted writers, only Varavara Rao is alive today and, during the half-century since this case, was accused in over 25 cases, all of which were struck down by law courts through due process, even if it went on for decades.
Even when an undertrial in the Secunderabad Conspiracy case, they foisted a new conspiracy case called the Ramnagar Conspiracy Case on him in May 1986. After 17 years, the court struck it down in 2003.
Pronounced “not guilty” so many times as “the prosecution could not prove a single charge in a single case”, he remains incarcerated in another case booked in 2018 (Bhima Koregaon or Elgar Parishad case) for which the trial is yet to begin.
The Secunderabad Conspiracy case describes Srjana, the literary monthly edited by Varavara Rao, as a journal publishing “provocative and inflammatory writings.” He was termed a fiery public speaker and accused of fomenting class hatred, discontent against the government, and disturbing social harmony. The prosecution ironically commended him as “successful in making a long-term impact on youth and teachers as he himself was a college lecturer.
“He addressed several meetings all over the state to propagate the objectives of this criminal conspiracy and openly advocated and supported the ideology of violence. He provoked people in general and youth in particular to overthrow the government established by law.”
It is worth describing the day of his arrest fifty years ago. It was about twelve days into the historic railway strike, and the May 1974 issue of Srjana, containing editorial and poems supporting the strike, was just out in the market. His wife had just given birth to a daughter on 26 April, and the mother in childbed was running high fever. They filled the rooms with water to keep the mother and child cool to combat the intense summer heat. That was when the police arrived. Everybody at home thought it was in connection with the railway strike.
The family had known of an arrest a couple of months ago, but this time, it was different, as the policemen were rude. They took him to the district SP’s office, and reports later revealed the humiliation he suffered at the SP office and Kazipet police lock-up before they shifted him to Hyderabad. Only in Hyderabad did he learn that they showed him as an accused in a conspiracy case.
At home, in a rented house, the landlord started shouting at the family immediately after the arrest and asked them to vacate the house immediately. The family had to vacate the house within hours, along with the three-week-old infant and the sick mother in a childbed.
The history of the Secunderabad Conspiracy Case pulsates with the energy of an untold thriller. Several adventures of the revolutionary movement, repression let loose by the state including encounter killings, fabricated accusations, the heroic response of the writers though it was the first of its kind experience, Cherabandaraju writing and singing songs to the tune of beating handcuffs in the court premises and court hall, the veritable scenes of the writers raising slogans throughout the court proceedings, the exemplary court statements read out by the writers collectively and individually, the harassment, foolishness, mismanagement, and delay tactics by the police and prosecution, the humour during the trial by the judges, prosecution and defence advocates, the congregations of the families of the accused in the court grounds… it was a real story full of emotions, tears, anguish, anger, humour, fear, helplessness, and what not.
(N Venugopal is Editor, Veekshanam, Telugu monthly journal of political economy and society. Views are personal.)
(Edited by VVP Sharma)
