INDIA'S: Supreme Court jailed the prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy for one day yesterday for her role in a campaign to halt a dam project. The court said it gave her a short sentence because she is a woman.
"We have no doubt she has committed criminal contempt," Justice R. P. Sethi told a court crowded with supporters of the author-turned-activist.
But "showing the magnanimity of the law and the respondent is a woman", the two-member bench of Justice Sethi and Justice G.B. Pattanaik said they would only give her a "symbolic" one-day jail sentence and a 2,000 rupee (€40) fine.
Roy shot to fame in 1997 when her first novel The God of Small Things, a tale of a twin brother and sister in southern India, won the Booker Prize. A vocal environmental and anti-nuclear campaigner, Roy could have been handed a six-month jail sentence yesterday by the court.
The billion-dollar dam on the Narmada River is India's biggest hydro-electric project which critics say will cause extensive environmental damage.
Roy said she had come prepared for the court's decision. "I have my backpack," she said calmly as she was escorted out of the court on her way to New Delhi's Tihar Jail, Asia's largest prison and home to an assortment of criminals from petty crooks to extortionists and murderers.
Her lawyer, Mr Prashant Bhushan, said he would announce today whether Roy would pay the fine. The court said she would face a further three months in jail if she refuses.
Mr Bhushan said Roy would also file a petition challenging the decision on the grounds that it violated principles of natural justice. - (Reuters)