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New Delhi: Early afternoon sunlight floods into Sahba Husain and Gautam Navlakha’s home, which is full of books and art, and cool and airy even in the Delhi summer. When I visit them, a little ahead of the second anniversary of Navlakha’s bail (May 14), I ask them if I can photograph them, by the entrance of their flat, in front of a painting of a bird in flight. My hope is to recreate a photograph from six years ago, clicked in April 2020, right before Navlakha, then a 68-year-old human rights activist, was compelled to surrender before the National Investigation Agency.

The two images of Gautam Navlakha and Sahba Hussain. The left was clicked before Navlakha’s arrest in 2020. The right, a few days ago in 2026. Photos: Mekhala Saran.

Post surrender, he was held captive for over four years under terrorism-related charges. Six years later, his case remains under-trial with no conclusion anywhere in sight. The case against him and his 15 co-accused has often been decried by civil society and human rights organisations as a “witch-hunt” against political dissidents. An array of independent investigators from across the world have also reported indications of malware use and fabricated evidence in the case.

I, however, am only partially successful in my attempt at recreating the old picture. For while they sit the way they did, where they did, there is a certain lightness that now envelops Navlakha and Husain. They appear at ease and smile for my camera. While Navlakha alone went to jail, the sense that I get is that they have both been handed their life back. At least to the extent possible, at the moment.

Navlakha confirms my suspicion when he says: “My jail account would remain incomplete without also Sahba’s account coming into it.”

When Navlakha was locked up in Maharashtra’s Taloja central jail, Husain fought a legal battle for as little as permission to see him.

She would then shuttle up and down from Delhi for brief mulakats (the term for jail meetings) at the prison, and during court hearings. She would also often wait for long spells — “two or three weeks” —  for his letters to reach her. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a period of 110 days when she did not hear from him. 

When his spectacles broke in jail, and he was denied a fresh pair, she rallied to get them to him. When he wrote to her from the cramped classroom where he was quarantined with 40 other prisoners during the pandemic – that he did not think he would survive it – she waged a battle to get him shifted out of there. When his health dwindled drastically, and he was finally moved into house arrest in 2022, Husain left her work and her life in Delhi and moved into “partial-captivity” with him in a hall above the CPI(M) library in Belapur, a Mumbai suburb.

“Nobody would have shown the kind of courage and commitment that Sahba showed. I mean, it’s just amazing that she chose to be........

© The Wire