‘Please let me go home and die’

Time is running out for Ghanshiram Solanki. The 55-year-old convict is HIV-positive and is “unlikely to survive”. Barely able to move his limbs, he is confined to his bed in Jehangir Hospital, Pune. He can’t even recognise his own son — has almost lost it all. But he has one hope: the Bombay high court will let him go home and die.

But the Narcotics Control Bureau [NCB], which arrested him with 40 kg heroin in June 2000, is not convinced. It thinks that Solanki being HIV-positive does not mean that he will die in a hurry. So, it is fiercely opposing his bail application in the high court. It fears that if given bail, Solanki will flee.

Solanki, who was convicted for drug smuggling, hails from Mandsuar, a small town in Madhya Pradesh. Sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, he has spent eight years in Yerawada Central Prison.

When Solanki’s bail petition came up for hearing on January 1, NCB counsel Mandar Goswami sought time to file reply as the NCB needed to verify the documents submitted by the convict in support of his plea. The reply was filed in justice BR Gavai’s court on Tuesday. It stated that just the Jehangir Hospital certificate furnished by Solanki would not do. A government hospital, too, must certify that the convict is indeed on his last lap. The court slotted the next hearing for Tuesday.

“The NCB is hell-bent on keeping a dying man in custody. It has delayed the legal process by taking unnecessary dates,” Nilofer Saiyad, Solanki’s advocate, said.

Tests did not find Solanki to be HIV-positive when he was in Sassoon Hospital in March last year. But his health kept failing. Fearing the worst, Solanki filed his bail application in high court in November. The Yerawada jail authorities were told to send his medical reports. On January 1, the prison authorities confirmed that Solanki was HIV-positive, and was also suffering from tuberculosis and typhoid.

The most recent medical reports of Solanki, written by Dr Uma Divate of Jehangir Hospital on February 4, stated that the patient was “unlikely to survive”. He was suffering from a slew of medical complications, including hypertension, renal dysfunction and bone marrow depression.

“Solanki’s family has been camping in Pune for four months. They want to take him home. Hotel bills and hospital bills are draining their resources,” Saiyad said.

Rajendra Bidkar, another of Solanki’s lawyers, said, “He did not recognise me when I went to see him last month. He could not even sign his application.”