Asha – Page 2 – free them all

Communal elements trying to wipe out Koregaon Bhima’s history of sacrifice, says Sharad Pawar

01/10/2024 Asha

Booklet: “Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein” (Access PDF)

Communal elements trying to wipe out Koregaon Bhima’s history of sacrifice, says Sharad Pawar

01/10/2024

The New Indian Express / by pti

Pawar also claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a threat to society and the thought in the latter’s mind was ‘detrimental to equality’.
NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar has said the history of Bhima Koregaon, located in Maharashtra’s Pune district, is of sacrifices made by people but some communal elements are trying to wipe it out.
Read more

Pawar says PM’s leadership detrimental to equality

30/09/2024

Times of India / by Anurag Bende

NCP (SCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Monday called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership detrimental to equality.
Pawar said, “People realised that Modi and his party do not believe in the Constitution. Hence, they did not give him a full mandate in the Lok Sabha election.” He was addressing his supporters at a public rally in Pune on Monday.
Read more

Also read:
▪ ‘Communal riot script… but Dalits target’: Ajaz Ashraf on Bhima Koregaon ‘myth’ and media (Newslaundry / Sep 2024)
▪ One year of Bhima-Koregaon case: Part I | History of a 200-year-old battle and why it still matters (The Leaflet / Jan 2019)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati │ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)
▪ The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2018)
▪ Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 2018)

Bombay HC permits Mahesh Raut to take admission in 3 year law course

25/09/2024 Asha

Imprisonment Does Not Restrict Individual’s Right To Pursue Education: Bombay High Court

25/09/2024

Live Law / by Narsi Benwal

The Bombay High Court recently observed that imprisonment of an individual does not restrict his or her right to education.
A division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Dr Neela Gokhale made the observation while ordering a Mumbai-based Law College, to admit Mahesh Raut, one of the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case, as a student for the LLB course for the academic year 2024-2027.
Read more
Read/download judgment

Imprisonment Does Not Restrict An Individual’s Right To Pursue Education: HC Allows Elgar Parishad Accused To Take Admission In Siddharth Law College

25/09/2024

Free Press Journal / by Urvi Mahajani

Bombay High Court allows plea by Elgar Parishad accused to take admission in 3 year law course in Siddharth College.
Imprisonment does not restrict an individual’s right to pursue further education, observed the Bombay High Court while allowing Mahesh Raut, an accused in the Elgar Parishad – Bhima Koregaon case, to take admission to the 3-year law course at Siddharth Law College. He was arrested by the NIA for his alleged links with the CPI Maoists.
Read more

Bombay HC permits Elgaar Parishad accused Mahesh Raut to take admission for LLB course

24/04/2024

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

“Or in the alternative, we leave it to the college to take the signature of the Petitioner on the documents from the Taloja Central Prison (where he is presently lodged),” the bench noted and allowed the plea.
The Bombay High Court permitted activist Mahesh Raut, an accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, to take admission to the three-year LLB course at Siddharth Law College in Mumbai.
The bench said that imprisonment does not restrict prisoners’ right to pursue further education.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Year after being granted bail, Mahesh Raut remains in jail as stay extended (The Indian Express / Sep 2024)
▪ Bhima Koregaon case: Two prisoners pass law entrance test (Hindustan Times / May 2024)
▪ Bhima Koregaon Case: Mahesh Raut, youngest accused, granted bail by the Bombay HC! (SabrangIndia / Sep 2023)

Indian court again refuses to hear Stan Swamy case

22/09/2024 Asha

Indian court again refuses to hear Stan Swamy case

23/09/2024

UCA News / by UCA News reporter

This is the eighth time that a judge has declined to perform the legal duties citing a conflict of interest
The top court of India’s Maharashtra state has, for an eighth time, refused to hear a plea seeking to clear late Jesuit Father Stan Swamy from an anti-terror case that includes a plot to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Justice Revati Mohite-Dere of the Bombay High Court recused herself from hearing the plea on Sept. 20 that wanted to remove Swamy’s name from the seven-year-old Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case filed against 16 leading activists in the country.
Read more

HC’s Justice Revati Mohite-Dere Recuses Self From Hearing Plea For Late Father Stan Swamy

22/09/2024

Free Press Journal / by Urvi Mahajani

Justice Revati Mohite-Dere of the Bombay High Court recused herself from hearing the plea filed by Father Frazer Mascarenhas, former principal of St Xavier’s College, seeking clearance of Father Stan Swamy’s name from the 2018 Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case.
Justice Revati Mohite-Dere of the Bombay High Court recused herself from hearing the plea filed by Father Frazer Mascarenhas, former principal of St Xavier’s College, seeking clearance of Father Stan Swamy’s name from the 2018 Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case.
Read more

Also read/watch:
▪ Apologize for what happened to Father Stan Swamy: Ex-SC judge Kurian Joseph (The New Indian Express / Sep 2024)
▪ When Push Comes to Shove: Tracking Judicial Recusals and Transfers (The Wire / Apr 2023)
▪ Incriminating document found in Fr. Stan Swamy’s computer ‘planted’; similar tampering found in other Bhima Koregaon accused: Reports American forensic firm (The Leaflet / Dec 2022)

▪ Video: Testimony of Stan Swamy, two days before his arrest on 8 October 2020.

en | 7:48 min | Oct 6, 2020
Watch video

Activists mark four years in jail under India’s UAPA without trial or bail

20/09/2024 Asha

Activists mark four years in jail under India’s UAPA without trial or bail

20/09/2024

Peoples Dispatch / by Peoples Dispatch

Umar Khalid and more than a dozen activoists have spent four years in prison under India’s controversial Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), with no trial or bail. The cases are widely seen as politically motivated efforts to suppress dissent
… The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has called for the scrapping of the UAPA, claiming it has been used by the Narendra Modi led-BJP government to silence the opposition and to put its critics behind bars in cases such as Bhima Koregaon and Delhi riots.
Read more

Umar Khalid’s Father Lambasts Misuse of Laws to Silence Dissent

20/09/2024

Clarion / by Team Clarion

Calls for judicial accountability as Umar Khalid and others languish in jail without bail or proper trial
Anti-terror laws are being systematically used to silence the dissenting voices in the country, the father of incarcerated JNU student and activist, Umar Khalid, has said.
“Laws like UAPA, TADA, and POTA were meant to combat terrorism, but they have been weaponised against ordinary citizens and activists,” Khalid’s father, Dr Qasim Rasool Ilyas, said. He was addressing an event ‘Curtailed Freedoms: A Travesty of Justice’ hosted by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) and Concerned Citizens Delhi at the Constitution Club of India here earlier this week.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Four Years of Injustice: Free Umar Khalid and All Political Prisoners (Hindus for Human Rights / Sep 2024)
▪ Inconsistencies in Bail Orders Mean Individual Liberty Is the Outcome of Judicial Lottery (The Wire / Oct 2022)

Year after being granted bail, Mahesh Raut remains in jail as stay extended

20/09/2024 Asha

The Indian Express / by Sadaf Modak

Family says extended stay on bail unprecedented delay in delivering justice
On September 21, 2023, the Bombay High Court granted bail to activist Mahesh Raut, an accused in the Elgaar Parishad case. A year later, 37-year-old Raut remains in jail, with a stay granted then on his bail order by the High Court for three weeks, extended from time to time with no effective hearing so far on the appeal in the Supreme Court.
Read more

Also read:
▪ The Supreme Court Is Making Bail Easier In Terrorism, Money Laundering Cases – Except When It Ignores Itself (article 14 / Sep 2024)
▪ ‘Ominous portents’: Why High Court staying its own bail orders in Bhima Koregaon case is troubling (Scroll.in / Dec 2023)
▪ Bhima Koregaon Case: Mahesh Raut, youngest accused, granted bail by the Bombay HC! (SabrangIndia / Sep 2023)

BK-16 Prison Diaries: Ramesh Gaichor on the Elgar prisoners’ defiance of the neo-Peshwai prison system

19/09/2024 Asha

To mark six years of the arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of political dissidents in the Bhima Koregaon case, The Polis Project is publishing a series of writings by the BK-16, and their families, friends and partners. By describing various aspects of the past six years, the series offers a glimpse into the BK-16’s lives inside prison, as well as the struggles of their loved ones outside. Each piece in the series is complemented by Arun Ferreira’s striking and evocative artwork.

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

The Polis Project / by Ramesh Gaichor

Jinhe naaz hai Hind par unko lao
Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain?
(Bring those who are proud of this land
Where are they who are proud of this land?)

These lines of Sahir Ludhianvi, written shortly after the country gained independence, still strike a deep chord. But today, in what way will the neo-Peshwai government of this country receive these words, and what will it do to poets and song-writers like Sahir?
Perhaps it will put them behind towering impenetrable walls, erected over segregated acres of land, under the watchful eye of 24-hour security guards, armed with firearms, lathis, and belts.
Read more

Video | Many Meanings of Bhima Koregaon: Ajaz Ashraf

16/09/2024 Asha

By Daanish Bin Nabi

en | 20:12min | 2024
Watch video:

Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Pages: 496
Challenging Caste reads the violence at Bhima Koregaon as a clash between two worldviews – one striving to flatten the social hierarchy, the other justifying and perpetuating it. This book rips apart the Maoist conspiracy theory and the Urban Naxal narrative.
Read more/order

‘How Long Can the Moon Be Caged?’: An investigation of how the state can stifle dissent brutally

15/09/2024 Asha

Scroll.in / by Shevlin Sebastian

Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia also write about those who are battling to uphold individual and human rights.
…
Vijayan and Recchia talk at length about the notorious Bhima Koregaon case, where 16 activists, teachers, intellectuals, university professors, writers, and lawyers were arrested and charged with arms smuggling, for allegedly helping Maoists, and for hatching a plan to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi, apart from waging war against the state – Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Hany Babu, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, and Father Stan Swamy (who died tragically while imprisoned).
Read more

How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners

Authors: Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia
Publishing Date: Aug 2023
Publisher: Pluto Press
Pages: 247
Read more / order

Also read:
▪ Process as Punishment – Recent books that bear witness to the BK-16’s incarceration (The Caravan / Jul 2024)
▪ Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Pages: 496
Read more/order
▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India

Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
Read more / order

Apologize for what happened to Father Stan Swamy: Ex-SC judge Kurian Joseph

14/09/2024 Asha

The New Indian Express / by Express News Service

He added that this was a failure on the part of courts, civil societies and the media to project what was right and truthful.
The three pillars of the Constitution – legislature, executive and judiciary – have lost their credibility, and their core ideas have been shaken, said former Supreme Court judge Kurian Joseph on Friday.
Read more

Also read/watch:
▪ US House Urges India To Probe Activist Stan Swamy’s Death In Custody (NDTV / Jul 2024)
▪ Jesuit Missions repeats call to clear Indian priest’s name (Indcatholic News / Jul 2024)
▪ Incriminating document found in Fr. Stan Swamy’s computer ‘planted’; similar tampering found in other Bhima Koregaon accused: Reports American forensic firm (The Leaflet / Dec 2022)

▪ Video: Testimony of Stan Swamy, two days before his arrest on 8 October 2020.

en | 7:48 min | Oct 6, 2020
Watch video

Video: UnPanel – Future of Dissent | Dr. Anand Teltumbde @ #PrivacySupreme

10/09/2024 Asha

The Wire / by The Wire

In this UnPanel session, Dr. Anand Teltumbde joined us remotely for Future of Dissent to answer the question of what does it mean to dissent in digital India? We explore how core democratic virtues like protests, dissent, and rights advocacy have become prone to targeted surveillance and privacy intrusions by the State. Read more about Privacy Supreme 2024 here.

en | 23:21min | 2024
Watch video

Also read:
▪ How the State uses ‘national security’ to spellbind the process of justice (The Leaflet / Jul 2024)
▪ A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism (The Wire 7 Jul 2024)
▪ AI Report: India’s exploitation of terrorism financing assessments to target the civil society (Amnesty.org / Sep 2023)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)