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Koregaon Bhima enquiry commission gets another extension

29/03/2023 Asha

Graphic by Arun Ferreira & Vernon Gonsalves

Pune Mirror / by By PuneMirror Bureau

The government has also made it clear that this would be the last extension to the enquiry commission and no further time will be granted
The order issued by the state government stated that the commission has been granted an extension of three months till June 30, 2023 to submit the report
The Maharashtra government on Wednesday granted another extension of three months to Koregaon Bhima Enquiry Commission. The commission is investigating a sequence of events that led to communal violence reported in Koregaon Bhima in Pune district on January 1, 2018. The two-member commission is headed by a retired high court judge J N Patel and former chief secretary Sumit Malik is a member of it.
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Also Read:
● Top Investigating Officer Admits Elgar Parishad Event ‘Had No Role’ in Bhima Koregaon Violence (The Wire / Dec 27, 2022)
● Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 30, 2018)
● Saffron Conspiracy in Bhima Koregaon? – Fact finding report by Rashtra Seva Dal unearths insidious scheme to target Dalits (CJP / Jan 2018)

Dark Days for Human Rights Activists in India

29/03/2023 Asha

International Policy Digest / by Paul Newman

On November 28, 2018, A.P. Jithender Reddy, a former member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, introduced legislation protecting human rights activists…
In February, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released an opinion, declaring Swamy’s detention arbitrary and his death “utterly preventable.” Many other activists including Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Anand Teltumbde, and Sudha Bharadwaj stand accused of similar offenses.
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Criminalisation of passive membership under the UAPA

27/03/2023 Asha

The Leaflet / by Mihir Desai

The running motif of the recent Supreme Court judgment on the UAPA (and POTA and TADA) is that under the guise of sovereignty and integrity of the nation, the Parliament can do anything and pass any law. The judgment is likely to lead to more arrests and denial of bail, and further stigmatise dissidents and their work. It virtually sanctions a police State.
…
Additionally, the First Schedule to the UAPA, which lists banned terrorist organisations, mentions in many entries that their ‘frontal organisations’ are also banned. These frontal organisations are not notified anywhere and suddenly make their first appearance only in chargesheets. For instance, in the Bhima Koregaon cases, the chargesheets filed by national investigation agencies implicate persons on the basis of their membership of frontal organisations such as the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights and the Indian Association of Peoples Lawyers, among others. These organisations were never notified as unlawful or banned. But by the present judgment, mere membership of these organisations will render all members liable to prosecution and punishment.
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Also read:
● UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022)
● NIA Opposes Stan Swamy’s Bail; Calls PUCL, Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan ‘Maoist Fronts’ (The Wire / Jan 2021)
● 2 years, 3 charge sheets & 16 arrests — Why Bhima Koregaon accused are still in jail (The Print / Oct 2020)

US government report flags ‘significant human rights issues’ in India

21/03/2023 Asha

US government report flags ‘significant human rights issues’ in India

22/03/2023

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

The report was released nearly a year after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concern about the ‘rise in human rights abuses’ in India.
An annual report released by the United States government on Monday flagged “significant human rights issues” in India, including extra-judicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.
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Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2022

20/03/2023

By United States Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

…
Arbitrary Arrest: The law prohibits arbitrary arrest or detention, however, police reportedly continued to arrest persons arbitrarily. There were reports of police detaining individuals for custodial interrogation without identifying themselves or providing arrest warrants…
Multiple courts denied bail to the majority of the 16 activists incarcerated on conspiracy charges related to the Elgaar Parishad Bhima Koregaon protests that Page 10 resulted in several deaths. The accused claimed the charges were politically motivated. In 2021, human rights activist and Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, age 84, died in a private hospital after contracting COVID-19 in prison and after being denied bail on medical grounds by an NIA special court. On August 10, the Supreme Court granted bail on medical grounds to Varvara Rao, age 82, a poet and human rights activist, and directed that he should not leave Mumbai without the court’s permission. On November 26, the Supreme Court affirmed the Bombay High Court’s order to release Anand Teltumbde, age 73, on bail on the condition that he remain within the Mumbai jurisdiction until the trial concludes. Additionally, activist Sudha Bharadwaj was released on bail in December 2021.
Read full report

Civic Freedoms in India ‘Repressed’: Global Monitor Civicus

17/03/2023 Asha

The Wire / by The Wire Staff

The section on India talks about the use of draconian laws like the UAPA and the use of the FCRA to target NGOs who do not toe the government’s line.
Civicus, a global civil society alliance, has kept India’s status as ‘repressed’ when it comes to civic freedoms in its new report, People Power Under Attack 2022. In 2018, India’s civic freedoms had been categorised as ‘obstructed’ – but it was downgraded to ‘repressed’ in 2019 has stayed in that zone ever since.
The section on India talks about the use of draconian laws like the UAPA and the use of the FCRA to target NGOs who do not toe the government’s line:
“In India, anti-terror laws such as the repressive Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act have been systematically used by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to keep student activists and HRDs – such as people the state alleges to have instigated violence in the village of Bhima Koregaon in 2018 – in detention.
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Read full report „People Power Under Attack 2022“

Has India Ever Been a Democracy? – Book review by Anand Teltumbde

14/03/2023 Asha

The Wire / by Anand Teltumbde

Debashish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane’s ‘To Kill a Democracy’ deals with the question how democracies get killed and dismisses the commonplace perspective of the “breakdowns”.

“Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic…”
∼ B.R. Ambedkar

The title of Debashish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane’s book, To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, implies that India was a democracy which has been killed and transformed into despotism under Narendra Modi. Not quite; it rather argues that the current state of degeneration, though representing a kink in the slow-paced rhetorical liberalism of plutarchy, is not entirely brought about by the Hindutva dispensation.
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Bhima Koregaon Case: An Analysis Of The Legal Framework, Evidence, And Implication for Civil Liberties

12/03/2023 Asha

Journal of Legal Research and Juridical Sciences / by Olivia Hati, Yuvraj Singh

ABSTRACT
The Bhima Koregaon case refers to the arrests of several human rights activists and lawyers in India in 2018 for their alleged involvement in inciting violence during the Bhima Koregaon incident 2018. The Bhima Koregaon incident was a violent clash between Dalits (a historically marginalized community in India) and upper-caste groups in Maharashtra. The activists were accused of having links with Maoist organizations and were charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), which allows for prolonged detention without bail and has been criticized for its potential for misuse. The case has been controversial, with many civil society groups and human rights organizations alleging that the arrests were politically motivated and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. The case has also drawn international attention, with several UN experts expressing concern about the treatment of the activists and the potential for human rights violations in the case.
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Koregaon Bhima commission to call Prakash Ambedkar to appear / The Strange Answers Of Shivaji Pawar

07/03/2023 Asha

The Strange Answers Of Shivaji Pawar

07/03/2023

Rediff.com / by Jyoti Punwani

For four days, the officer avoided giving any straight answers, becoming the first witness in the 48 witnesses that have appeared so far, to have achieved this feat.
For four days last week, Deputy Commissioner of Police Shivaji Pawar, the investigating officer in charge of the Elgar Parishad case till it was taken over by the National Investigation Agency, was cross-examined before the Bhima Koregaon Commission.
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Koregaon Bhima inquiry commission to call Prakash Ambedkar to appear before it on March 27

04/03/2023

The Indian Express / by Chandan Haygunde

The two-member commission was formed by the Maharashtra government to investigate the cause of violence in the Koregaon Bhima area on January 1, 2018. One person died and several others were injured in the violence.
The Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry has passed an order to issue a ‘letter of request’ to prominent Maharashtra Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar, asking him to appear before it during a hearing in Pune on March 27.
The order was passed on Thursday following an application filed by advocate Aashish Satpute, the lawyer representing the commission.
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Several retired bureaucrats recalled the custody death of Jesuit priest Stan Swamy

04/03/2023 Asha

By Constitutional Conduct Group

CCG OPEN LETTER TO THE HON’BLE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA – HARASSMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji,
… We write to you today because we are deeply perturbed by the continued harassment, through speech and criminal action, of minority groups in the country by persons associated with your government, your party, organisations connected to it, and by mischief makers from amongst the public.
… Jesuit priest, Father Stan Swamy, for no fault of his except that he was closely working with the Adivasis, Dalits and other underprivileged people of Jharkhand, was virtually driven to his death by no less than the State.
Read full statement

Also Read:
● Organisation named after Stan Swamy calls to free rights defenders (The Telegraph / March 2023)
● CCG OPEN LETTER TO CITIZENS OF INDIA (Constitutional Conduct Group / Nov 2021)

The ugly face of justice: Anand Teltumbde reviews Abdul Wahid Shaikh’s ‘Innocent Prisoners’

25/02/2023 Asha

Scroll.in / by Anand Teltumbde

The book exposes a sinister modus operandi of the police of charging innocent Muslims for terror acts, which is structurally made easier in India.
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

– Milan Kundera, ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’.

What if the state that is supposed to have been created by the people, the real sovereign as the constitution proclaims, turns into a monster that devours them? What if the police, vested with the responsibility of protecting people with law and order, turns into an organised gang of criminals supported by the state, conspire against innocent people, arrest them, torture them, and kill them with impunity?
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