Through the lens of her jail experience and that of her fellow prisoners, Anuradha’s vivid description takes us to the unknown and unseen world of women prisoners, their children, their day-to-day lives and their worldview of society as a larger prison even outside the jail.
Anuradha wonders what constitutes a crime. Who does the law protect? Are the laws of the land capable of rendering justice to classes and social groups that are exploited? Whether the existing laws are being implemented fairly?
In the end, the questions remain: What is a crime? Who is a criminal?
About the author
B. ANURADHA is a women’s rights activist based in Hyderabad. While working for a bank in Hyderabad, she came in touch with the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee and worked as an activist from 1990 to 1993 and later, as a women’s rights activist. She resigned from her job in 1996 to work in the Chaitanya Mahila Sangam, a state-wide women’s organization. She was on the editorial board of the magazine, Mahila Margam. In 2005, she relocated to Jharkhand to work as an activist in the Nari Mukti Sangh. She was arrested in October 2009 and spent four years in the Hazaribagh Central Jail.
Anuradha has written several articles and twenty-seven short stories. Most of the prison stories have been published in the Sunday special edition of the daily, Andhra Jyothi, as well as in Mahila Margam, Aruna Tara, Sahithi Godavari and the web magazine, Saranga. Sixteen of these stories were later published as a collection by Virasam (Revolutionary Writers Association). Some of the stories were also translated into Hindi and published in Hindi magazines. ‘Paro’s Children’ was translated into Bengali. She has translated The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble, Articles of Ambedkar on Women (Feminist Ambedkar), and Feminising the Labour Relations by Dr M. Vanamala into Telugu, and co-translated Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth along with N. Ravi.
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