Elsewhere in the world, Dr Randall Sequeira would have been the toast of the nation. He would have been celebrated as a doctor who gave up the comforts of urban life to serve people whom society had virtually abandoned. In India, however, he is in jail, accused of crimes of a kind that even the dacoits who once terrorised the ravines of Chambal would have struggled to imagine being accused of.

Before discussing his predicament, let me narrate an experience from my own life. For 23 years, I was associated with Deepalaya, an NGO that worked among the poor and marginalised. We had established a 30-bed hospital in a village in Nuh district of Haryana. Finding a doctor for that hospital was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had.

The hospital was not situated in some remote corner of the country. It was barely 30 to 35 kilometres from Gurgaon, now renamed Gurugram, after Guru Dronacharya. Gurugram has infrastructure that can put many Indian cities in the shade. Yet, a short drive away, we were struggling to find a doctor for a small hospital serving the rural poor.

The hospital had an operation theatre, an X-ray machine, doctors' cabins and other basic facilities. The community wanted an MBBS doctor, preferably a woman. We were prepared to pay the salary that a fresh medical graduate would receive in Delhi. We even offered a furnished, two-bedroom flat on the Deepalaya campus.

The response to our advertisement was encouraging until we mentioned the location. One candidate after another withdrew. The prospect of living in a village, apparently, was more frightening than the prospect of unemployment.

In desperation, we appointed a postgraduate doctor, the only one willing to join. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a nuisance. A patient suffering from an ordinary cold would be asked to undergo half a dozen expensive investigations before he prescribed even paracetamol. Understandably, patients stopped visiting him. I had to spend considerable time and effort terminating his services after barely two months.

This experience taught me something about the crisis in rural healthcare. Doctors are reluctant to work in villages, even when reasonable salaries and accommodation are offered. That is why medical institutions like Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, have sponsorship arrangements under which students undertake to serve in rural hospitals for a specified period after graduation.

Many families spend more than a crore of rupees educating their children in private medical institutions. They naturally expect a return on their investment. But should medicine be treated merely as a commercial investment? NEET tests a candidate's academic ability. It does not test for compassion, social commitment or willingness to serve the disadvantaged.

I remember visiting St. John's Medical College in Bengaluru when it was celebrating a jubilee. There were complaints that the institution had reserved some seats for religious personnel, namely priests and nuns. I asked the priest who was its manager to explain the rationale.

There was a huge map of India hanging on the wall. He pressed a button, and several small bulbs lit up. They did not mark state capitals or metropolitan cities. They represented remote villages where nuns trained at St. John's were serving the poor and the indigent. The map said more about the institution than any prospectus could have done.

I recalled meeting a nun-doctor from St. John's who had become the darling of the people of Baramulla in Kashmir, close to the Pakistan border. A gynaecologist, she had attended to countless women and had delivered many children. The people adored her.

It was this St. John's tradition of service that shaped Dr Randall Sequeira, a medical graduate of the institution.

Originally from Mangaluru in Karnataka, Sequeira grew up in Mumbai. He completed his MBBS at St. John's Medical College and pursued postgraduate studies at Sawai Man Singh Medical College in Jaipur. A relative of mine who is a surgeon is fond of telling people that he paid a monthly fee of just ?18 when he studied at Sawai Man Singh.

Dr Sequeira, now 39, could have chosen a lucrative career in Bengaluru or Mumbai. Instead, he chose Kalahandi in Odisha. He moved there in 2017, determined to serve people who had little access to medical care.

Kalahandi was once almost synonymous with starvation. Reports of hunger deaths, malnutrition and distress migration emerged from the district with depressing regularity. It was regarded as one of India's most backward regions. The Union government now calls them 'aspirational districts.'

Sequeira did not arrive in Kalahandi to earn a reputation. He went there to practise medicine. He travelled to remote tribal settlements, often negotiating difficult terrain to reach patients who could not travel to hospitals. He treated pregnant women, malnourished children and people suffering from malaria, tuberculosis and other illnesses. He was accessible when patients needed him and was often available round the clock.

It is precisely this relationship with the people that appears to have made him unwelcome to the establishment.

His predicament reminds me of the late Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who became a prisoner of conscience. The establishment portrayed him as a dreaded Maoist, although he was an ageing priest suffering from Parkinson's disease. He was denied even a straw to drink water. It took the authorities months to reject his request. He could not hold a glass because his hands trembled. The indignity and suffering he endured in prison ended in his death in judicial custody in July 2021.

The people who allowed an old, ailing priest to suffer such indignity cannot easily wash their hands of responsibility. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, haunted by the blood on her hands, lamented: 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.'

Let us return to Dr Sequeira and the region in which he chose to work.

Rayagada district is now in ferment over the proposed bauxite mining project in the Sijimali hills. Vedanta has secured the mining rights to a vast bauxite deposit spread across Rayagada and Kalahandi. The project envisages extracting millions of tonnes of bauxite annually over several decades. The Adani group's presence in Odisha's mineral economy has also become part of the wider debate over the increasing corporate appetite for the state's natural resources. For the tribal communities, however, the issue is the survival of their villages, forests, streams and livelihoods.

The villagers allege that the consent supposedly obtained from the gram sabhas was fraudulent. This is a serious allegation that requires an independent investigation.

The Supreme Court's landmark Niyamgiri judgment of 2013 reinforced the importance of gram sabhas in deciding matters affecting community and religious rights. Development cannot mean that the people who have lived on a piece of land for generations are reduced to spectators when decisions are made about its future.

The struggle over Sijimali is therefore not simply an anti-mining agitation. It is a question of constitutional rights and democratic consent. The tribal people are asking whether their voices count for anything when the interests of powerful corporations are involved.

Dr Sequeira became a marked man when he came forward to treat villagers injured during police action on April 6 and 7, 2026, against those protesting the construction of an approach road to the proposed mine. A doctor attending to injured people should be seen as performing his professional duty. But in an atmosphere where dissent is treated as disloyalty, even the act of providing medical assistance can become suspicious.

What is particularly disturbing is that neither Sequeira nor Laxman Naik, a Dalit activist and martial arts trainer associated with the Maa Mati Mali Suraksha Manch, was named in the original FIR. The police subsequently claimed that their involvement had emerged during the investigation.

The charges against them are breathtaking in their gravity. They include attempted murder, rioting with deadly weapons, and other charges. One cannot help asking what kind of investigation transforms a medical doctor who has spent years treating tribal patients into a person accused of such a catalogue of violent crimes.

The manner of their arrest on October 16 is equally disturbing. The police cannot expect the public to accept every accusation as gospel truth, particularly when the accused are people who have earned the trust of marginalised communities.

I have a particular interest in environmental movements because I have known people who have put their lives and careers on the line to protect nature. One of them is Dr A. Faizi, an environmentalist who played a role in the historic Silent Valley movement in Kerala.

The movement was led by the poet Sugathakumari, daughter of the poet and freedom fighter Bodheswaran. Her celebrated poem Marathinu Stuthi Geetham (Ode to a Tree) became the anthem of the campaign.

The proposed hydroelectric project would have submerged Silent Valley, one of the richest repositories of biodiversity in the Western Ghats. Thousands of rare species of plants and animals would have been threatened. Scientists, environmentalists, writers and ordinary citizens joined hands to oppose the project.

They did not face the fate that Dr Sequeira and Laxman Naik are facing today. Their campaign succeeded, and the project was abandoned in 1983. Silent Valley was subsequently declared a national park.

I also had the privilege of interviewing Sunderlal Bahuguna, the legendary environmentalist associated with the Chipko movement. He and his fellow activists taught us that development should not be measured merely by the number of dams constructed, tonnes of minerals extracted or corporate investments attracted.

These are the people who deserve national recognition. They are the ones who should be felicitated. Those who fatten their pockets at the expense of nature and the poor deserve scrutiny, not applause.

The Constitution does not grant the government an exclusive right to decide what constitutes development. Nor does it make peaceful opposition to a government decision a criminal offence. People have the right to question projects that threaten their homes and livelihoods. They have the right to organise, protest and seek legal remedies.

If there was violence, those responsible must be identified and prosecuted. But the investigation must be based on evidence, not on the assumption that everyone who opposes a mining project is an enemy of the state.

There is also a fundamental distinction between a doctor treating injured protesters and a person instigating violence. The former is an obligation of the medical profession; the latter, if established by evidence, is a criminal offence. The two should never be confused. If Dr Sequeira treated people injured during the police action, that should count in his favour as a doctor, not count against him as evidence of a conspiracy.

I am reminded once again of the map I saw at St. John's Medical College. Those little bulbs represented villages where its graduates were serving humanity. Dr Sequeira chose to become one such bulb, illuminating lives in a region that had little access to quality healthcare. What message are we sending to young doctors when someone who makes such a choice ends up in prison?

I do not suggest that a doctor's professional standing should place him above the law. If there is credible evidence of criminal conduct, he must face an impartial investigation and a fair trial. But the law must not become an instrument for intimidating those who stand with vulnerable communities.

Dr Sequeira is not a man who went to Kalahandi to make money. He went there to serve people who could not afford the services of doctors in metropolitan hospitals. Today, he is languishing in Rayagada Sub-Jail. Laxman Naik, who has been campaigning for the rights of local communities, is his fellow prisoner. The allegations against them should not be allowed to obscure the larger questions concerning the rights of tribal people, the accountability of corporations and the responsibilities of the state.

I began by saying that Dr Randall Sequeira would have been the toast of the nation elsewhere in the world. I repeat it with greater conviction now. A country that needs doctors in its villages cannot afford to punish those who voluntarily go there. A democracy that needs citizens to defend the rights of the poor cannot afford to criminalise their solidarity.