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Koregaon Bhima Commission Gets 24th Extension, Report Delayed Again

Koregaon Bhima Commission Gets 24th Extension, Report Delayed Again

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

Koregaon Bhima Commission Gets 24th Extension, Report Delayed Again

01/11/2026

Urban Acres / by Urban Acres

The Koregaon Bhima Commission’s 24th extension is not simply another administrative date change. It shows how a public inquiry constituted to establish the sequence of events behind the January 2018 violence in Pune district remains unfinished nearly nine years after the incident, despite the examination of 58 witnesses and the conclusion of witness hearings.
The Maharashtra government has extended the commission’s tenure until March 31, 2027. The state Home Department issued the letter on October 30, after the commission’s earlier extension was due to end on October 31. V V Palnitkar, the commission’s secretary, told The Indian Express that five more months were required to conclude pending arguments before the final report could be submitted to the government.
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Koregaon Bhima violence: Probe committee gets 24th extension

31/10/2026

The Indian Express / by Chandan Haygunde

Initially, the commission was given four months to submit its report, but its tenure had to be repeatedly extended to allow it to complete its work.
The Maharashtra government has granted yet another extension to the Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry till March 31, 2027.
The Home Department of the state government issued a letter in this regard on October 30.
This is the 24th extension granted to the commission probing the causes for violence in Pune’s Koregaon Bhima area on January 1, 2018, in which one person died and several others were injured where lakhs of Ambedkarites had gathered to commemorate the 200th battle of Koregaon Bhima.
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Also read:
▪ Koregaon Bhima Commission’s Long Delay Tests Maharashtra’s Accountability (Urban Acres / Sep 2026)
▪ Why caste Hindutva, not an Elgar conspiracy, is at the root of the Bhima Koregaon violence (The Polis Project / Feb 2025)
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire / June 2024)
▪ Top Investigating Officer Admits Elgar Parishad Event ‘Had No Role’ in Bhima Koregaon Violence (The Wire / Dec 2022)
▪ Casting a Veil – What we miss by ignoring Maratha caste politics in the Bhima Koregaon case (The Caravan, Dec 2020)

Bombay HC calls Arun Ferreira’s 2011 arrest illegal, orders Rs 2 lakh compensation

Bombay HC calls Arun Ferreira’s 2011 arrest illegal, orders Rs 2 lakh compensation

Bombay HC calls Arun Ferreira’s 2011 arrest illegal, orders Rs 2 lakh compensation

30/10/2026

The New Indian Express / by Sudhir Suryawanshi

Arun Ferreira was arrested in 2007 in multiple cases. Following acquittal in all the cases, the activist was to be released from Nagpur prison in September 2011
The Bombay High Court’s Nagpur Bench has held that the September 2011 arrest of activist Arun Ferreira was “illegal” and directed the Maharashtra government to pay him Rs 2 lakh in compensation.
… Ferreira is also an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case and is currently out on bail.
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Activist Arun Ferreira’s arrest illegal, give him Rs 2L: Bombay HC

31/10/2026

Times of India / by Vaibhav Ganjapure

Bombay HC has directed Maharashtra govt to pay Rs 2 lakh compensation to activist Arun Ferreira, ruling that his arrest outside Nagpur Central Prison in 2011 violated his fundamental rights under Articles 21 and 22. Partly allowing his 2012 plea, the Nagpur bench ordered the govt to deposit the amount in court within eight weeks.
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Bombay High Court grants ₹2 lakh compensation to Arun Ferreira for illegal arrest outside Nagpur Jail in 2011

30/10/2026

Bar & Bench / by Neha Joshi

The Court slammed the police for branding an undertrial as ‘absconding’ while he was detained in jail, and held that the arrest in an unmarked car violated constitutional safeguards.
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has held the September 2011 re-arrest of activist Arun Thomas Ferreira illegal and directed the State of Maharashtra to pay him ₹2 lakh in compensation. [Arun Thomas Ferreira v. State of Maharashtra & Ors.]
Read more

Also read/watch:
▪ Court Rejects NIA’s Plea to Put Elgar Parishad Accused Back in Jail (The Wire / Aug 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | Book Excerpt: Colours Of The Cage: A Prison Memoir, By Arun Ferreira (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ ‘No Material’ to Demonstrate Terror Link, Yet Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferriera Spent 5 Years in Jail [Read judgment] (The Wire / Jul 2023)

▪ Colours Of The Cage

Author: Arun Ferreira
Publishing Date: Sep 2014
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Pages: 176
In May 2007, human rights activist Arun Ferreira was picked up from the railway station and arrested by the Nagpur Police on charges of being a Naxalite. Over the next few months, he was charged with more crimes—of criminal conspiracy, murder, possession of arms and rioting, among others—and incarcerated in one of the most notorious prisons in Maharashtra, the Nagpur Central Jail.
This is an account of the nearly five years that Ferreira was imprisoned.
Read more/order
▪ Video: Arun Ferreira speaks about Life in an Indian Prison

en | 12:51 min | 2014
Watch video

The dark one’s due — the Modi-Shah-Doval nexus

The dark one’s due — the Modi-Shah-Doval nexus

Campaign, 2020

The Express Tribune / by Farrukh Khand Pitfafi

For 12 years the Modi-Shah-Doval nexus has left breadcrumbs mapping a creeping, hostile takeover of the republic
… Once the judiciary was tamed, the rot spread through the hard power structures. As early as 2015, prosecutor Rohini Salian told NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain of instructions from the National Investigation Agency leadership to go soft on right-wing terrorists in the Malegaon case.
… The soft power pipeline was choked as ruthlessly. The first move tested the waters with blatant appointments, packing historical research councils with revisionists. The state then installed RSS enforcers as university vice-chancellors to break student resistance. It weaponised anti-terror laws in the Bhima Koregaon case, inventing the phantom threat of the urban Naxal to criminalise scholars like Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen and Hany Babu. 
Read more

Also read:
▪ Is Exit Fear Gnawing at Narendra Modi’s Heart? (The Wire / Nov 2026)
▪ Fall of Democracy’s Last Bastion: Election Commission as the BJP’s Strategic Shield (The Wire | by Anand Teltumbde | Aug 2025)
▪ McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey! (The Crossbill / Jul 2024)
▪ Contrary To SC’s Rules Of Assignment, At Least 8 Politically Sensitive Cases Moved To One Judge In 4 Months (Article 14 / Dec 2023)
▪ In Criminalising Political Action, Judges Are Helping the State Bring Politics Into India’s Court (The Wire / Oct 2022)
▪ The Bhima Koregaon Arrests and the Resistance in India (Monthly Review / (Apr 2022)
▪ The Security Playbook Used To Erode Democracy In Modi’s India & How The Tide Might Turn (article 14 / March 2022)
▪ India’s Hindu Nationalist Project Relies on Brutal Repression (Jacobinmag / Apr 2021)
▪ McCarthyism in Modi’s India (Jacobinmag | by Anand Teltumbde | Oct 2018)

India’s Quest for Political Alternative Beyond the BJP and Congress

India’s Quest for Political Alternative Beyond the BJP and Congress

Countercurrents / by Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The crisis in contemporary India is a crisis manufactured by the political duopoly of the arrogance of the Congress Party and dominance of the BJP. Crony capitalists are the beneficiaries of today’s economic crisis and growth.
A Hinduised Congress and a Congressiesed Hindutva represent the same bourgeois politics, in which corporate crony capitalists benefit at the cost of India and Indians.
… Both the BJP and Congress Party have created legal structures for the empowerment of corporations and terrorise people with laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). These laws were created by the Congress Party and are used by the BJP to demonise democratic dissent and weaken constitutional democracy in India. They are used against people such as Binayak Sen, Umar Khalid, G. N. Saibaba, Stan Swamy, Soni Sori, Sudha Bharadwaj and many other idealist youths and students of India.
Read more

Also read:
▪ PUDR Condemns the Imposition of an ‘Undeclared Emergency’ and the Planned Crackdown on Peaceful Protests in Delhi (PUDR / Oct 2026)
▪ Why UAPA demands urgent reform (The Hindu / Oct 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Politics Of Division: Why Autocrats Foster Binary Thinking (Outlook | by Anand Teltumbde | Feb 2025)

Bombay HC Seeks Credentials Of Congress, PUCL, AITUC In Pleas Challenging Maharashtra Special Public Security Act

Bombay HC Seeks Credentials Of Congress, PUCL, AITUC In Pleas Challenging Maharashtra Special Public Security Act

Drawing by Arun Fereirra

Live Law / by Narsi Benwal

The Bombay High Court on Friday asked the Indian National Congress, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) to furnish details of their registration, constitution and office-bearers before it proceeds to hear their petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Act (MSPSA).
… The State’s affidavit cited various instances particularly, the caste-based riots infamously known as the Bhima-Koregaon Violence which broke out across Maharashtra on January 01, 2018. It stated that the arrest of the ‘central committee’ members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-M) in Elgar Parishad, brought national focus on ‘Urban Activities’ of ‘Urban Maoists.’
Read more

Also read:
▪ ‘Maharashtra centre of Maoist urban network’: State defends Special Public Security Act in court (The Indian Express / Oct 2026)
▪ Modi’s ‘Dimagi Naxal’ Remark Is an Attempt to Frame the Next Wave of Youth Dissent as Anti-National (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Aug 2026)
▪ PM Modi calls for ‘dimagi Naxals’ to be ‘found and isolated’ in his Independence Day speech (Scroll.in / Aug 2026)
▪ Insecurity By Law: A Critique of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill in the Context of India’s Banning Regime (PUDR / Jul 2025)
▪ McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey! (The Crossbill / Jul 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Top Cop Accuses Decades-Old Cultural, Rights Orgs of Working as ‘Naxal Fronts’ (The Wire / Feb 2022)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)

Modi opens war on the people, and the Supreme Court looks on

Modi opens war on the people, and the Supreme Court looks on

Bengaluru Lawyers Protest Delhi Arrests, Demand CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s Removal

13/12/2026

ETV Bharat / by ETV Bharat English Team

They voiced their concerns over alleged voter deletions, police action against dissenters and the independence of constitutional institutions, seeking the intervention of the Supreme Court.
… Advocate and legal activist Narasimhamurthy condemned alleged police atrocity against lawyers, students and journalists. … He also cited the imprisonment of activists, including GN Saibaba and Father Stan Swamy, and detentions in the Bhima Koregaon case as examples of the treatment of dissenting voices.
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Modi opens war on the people, and the Supreme Court looks on

10/10/2026

Frontline / by Anand Teltumbde

The government has used force to stop protests against Gyanesh Kumar and the SIR. The Supreme Court’s delays and refusal of interim relief have allowed the process to continue, prompting criticism that its caution favors the executive.
On October 10, Delhi was sealed before the protest began. Dozens of Metro stations were closed or restricted, trains cancelled, and mobile internet suspended in central Delhi. Jantar Mantar was ringed with barricades, cameras, water cannons, and security forces; buses waited to carry detainees away. …
In the Bhima-Koregaon case, civil-rights activists, lawyers, and scholars were arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and held for years without trial. During the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Muslim activists, including Umar Khalid, were prosecuted under the same law. Prolonged detention before trial makes process itself a punishment. It was meant to terrorise people into silence. Women wrestlers who protested alleged sexual abuse by a BJP MP were met with police force rather than an urgent reckoning with their allegations.
Read more

Also read:
▪ PUDR Condemns the Imposition of an ‘Undeclared Emergency’ and the Planned Crackdown on Peaceful Protests in Delhi (PUDR / Oct 2026)
▪ Who Will Police the Indian Police? (The Wire | by Anand Teltumbde | Sep 2026)
▪ In Defence of the Profanity of Protesters (The Wire | by Anand Teltumbde | Jul 2026)
▪ Who Answers to Us?: The Jantar Mantar Protests and India’s Missing Idea of Accountability (The Wire | by Anand Teltumbde | Jul 2026)

Joint Submission to GANHRI Regarding Review of the Accreditation Status of the NHRC of India

Joint Submission to GANHRI Regarding Review of the Accreditation Status of the NHRC of India

Front Line Defenders / by Front Line Defenders & others

We, the undersigned, are regional and international human rights nongovernmental organizations as well as individuals expressing concerns over the developments at the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRCI).
…
Over the past decade, the NHRCI has not intervened when Indian authorities have targeted students, activists, lawyers, journalists, and critics of the government under the abusive, counterterrorism law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). This includes 16 prominent activists who promoted the rights of persons from India’s most marginalized communities, accusing them of inciting violence that occurred during a Dalit meeting in January 2018 in Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra state. The trial is yet to begin but 15 activists arrested in the case spent years in jail before they were granted bail, while 84-year-old Stan Swamy, a prominent tribal rights activist, died in custody, which a UN expert termed as “a stain on India’s human rights record.” According to reports by the US-based forensic firm Arsenal Consulting, malware was used to surveil and plant evidence on the computers of at least three accused in this case.
Read more

‘A National Hero’: Jailed Activist Umar Khalid Wins International Award For Human Rights Defenders

09/10/2026

The Wire / by The Wire Staff

A special ceremony was held at the Trinity College in Dublin, to honour all the recipients. Khalid was represented by his father, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas.
Activist Umar Khalid who has been jailed since the last six years has won the 2026 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
“Umar Khalid is the 2026 Asia winner of the Front Line Defenders Award. To those who try to silence his work, he is seen as an “enemy of the state’’ and an “anti-national”, but to others, he is a national hero, a voice of the people, and a human rights defender.
Read more

Also read:
▪ India added to human rights watchlist as repression intensifies in Modi’s third term (CIVICUS / Jul 2026)
▪ Civic freedoms remain at risk with crackdown on protests, internet restrictions and denial of bail to activists (CIVICUS / Jan 2026)
▪ Ongoing detention of activists without bail, criminalisation of dissent and ban on books (CIVICUS / Sep S025)
▪ Read India report: INDIA – COUNTRY FACTSHEET 2025 (World Organization Against Torture / Jun 2025)

▪ India: Authorities must immediately repeal repressive new criminal laws (Amnesty International / Jul 2024)
▪ India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS /Jul 2024)
▪ Why Courts Are Ignoring Concerns Of Planted Evidence In The Bhima-Koregaon Prosecution (article14 / Jan 2023)

‘Maharashtra centre of Maoist urban network’: State defends Special Public Security Act in court

‘Maharashtra centre of Maoist urban network’: State defends Special Public Security Act in court

Me Too Urban Naxal campaign. 2022.

‘Maharashtra centre of Maoist urban network’: State defends Special Public Security Act in court

07/10/2026

The Indian Express / by Omkar Gokhale

Defending the law against Congress, CPI and AITUC pleas, the state says other Maoist-hit states already have similar laws that have withstood judicial scrutiny
Maharashtra, “because of its highest urban population has become center of Maoist urban network,” the state government has told the Bombay High Court, defending the Maharashtra Special Public Security (MSPS) Act. … Citing Elgaar Parishad and other cases, the affidavit claimed Maharashtra has the highest number of frontal organisations in the country, 64. It said Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand had banned such groups under similar laws that “withstood judicial scrutiny”, so Maharashtra was empowered to enact one for “local security environments”.
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Maharashtra Has Become ‘Centre’ Of Maoist Urban Network: State Defends Special Public Security Act Before Bombay High Court

07/10/2026

Live Law / by Narsi Benwal

The Maharashtra Government while defending its decision to enact the Maharashtra Special Public Security Act (MSPSA), on Tuesday (October 6) told the Bombay High Court that because of its highest urban population, the State has become a ‘centre’ for Maoist urban network and thus in absence of legal framework to ban such ‘left wing extremist’ organisations, it has come up with this law as done by states like Telangana, Andra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Modi’s ‘Dimagi Naxal’ Remark Is an Attempt to Frame the Next Wave of Youth Dissent as Anti-National (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Aug 2026)
▪ Insecurity By Law: A Critique of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill in the Context of India’s Banning Regime (PUDR / Jul 2025)
▪ McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey! (The Crossbill / Jul 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Top Cop Accuses Decades-Old Cultural, Rights Orgs of Working as ‘Naxal Fronts’ (The Wire / Feb 2022)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)
▪ From ‘tukde tukde gang’ to ‘urban Naxal’: How media trials enable the government to stifle dissent (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)

The prisoner as political category

The prisoner as political category

Maktoob / by Mohd Alfaz Ali

To mark Prisoners’ Day honestly is to notice this asymmetry, not just to honor the dead of 1929. It is to ask why a nation can revere its historical political prisoners while refusing that name to those living through an almost identical experience today
On 13th September 1929, Jatin Das died in Lahore Central Jail after sixty-three days without food. He had not committed a violent act. His crime, in the eyes of the colonial state, was conviction, the belief that India should govern itself. His body, wasting through week after week of hunger strike, became the only language of protest still available to a man the state had already decided to silence through confinement rather than trial. His death is why September 13th is observed as Prisoners’ Day.
… Sharjeel Imam has been in Jail without trial since 2020. Umar Khalid’s case has moved at a similar pace. The Bhima Koregaon accused, several of them elderly, some in visibly deteriorating health, have spent years as undertrials on charges that have yet to be substantively tested in court. 
Read more

Also read:
▪ Civil Liberties Groups Seek Release of Political Prisoners (Deccan Chronicle / Aug 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Incarceration As Politics: A Timeline Of Political Prisoners In Independent India (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Justice On Hold: How India’s Trial Courts Are Creating a New Class of Political Prisoners—Those Accused Of ‘Terrorism’ (article 14 / Dec 2025)
▪ The Grammar of the Power to Arrest and Search under UAPA (Constitutional Law and Philosophy | by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling | Jul 2025)
▪ Who Is a ‘Political Prisoner’? Rona Wilson Says Caste and Religion Are Key to the Answer (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report
▪ Punished without trial: How India’s political prisoners are being denied basic rights in jail (Scroll.in / Aug 2022)

31 UAPA cases, years in jail: Inside Maharashtra’s overburdened Maoist belt court

31 UAPA cases, years in jail: Inside Maharashtra’s overburdened Maoist belt court

The Indian Express / by Sadaf Modak

Set up in 2023 to bring trials closer to remote Maoist affected villages, the court now has 31 pending UAPA cases, most more than five years old; witnesses travel for hours through forested areas while accused are often produced from distant jails through videoconferencing
… The need for a dedicated court had also come into focus before the Supreme Court earlier this year during the bail proceedings of lawyer Surendra Gadling, who has represented several UAPA accused and was arrested in the 2018 Elgaar Parishad case. Gadling had told the Supreme Court that his 2016 Surjagarh arson case remained pending without a court or prosecutor in Aheri.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Supreme Court to hear bail plea of Bhima Koregaon accused Surendra Gadling on October 14 (The Hindu / Sep 2026)
▪ 7 yrs in jail, charges framed against Surendra Gadling in Surajgarh arson case. What Bombay HC told SC (The Print / Apr 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Justice On Hold: How India’s Trial Courts Are Creating a New Class of Political Prisoners—Those Accused Of ‘Terrorism’ (article 14 / Dec 2025)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report
▪ Encountering Resistance – State Policy for Development in Gadchiroli (PUDR / June 2018)
▪ DISINHERITING ADIVASIS – THE GADCHIROLI GAME PLAN (KAFILA / June 2018)