Background – Page 16 – free them all

Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry further extends period for submitting final arguments

09/07/2024 Asha

Graphic by Arun Ferreira & Vernon Gonsalves

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

The Commission will compile its report after the final arguments are heard. Tenure of the commission expires on August 31, 2024.
The Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry has extended the period for submitting the final arguments before it till July 31.
The Commission had initially asked the lawyers appearing before it to submit their final arguments in writing by March 1, 2024. The period was later extended till June 30.
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Also Read:
▪ Top Investigating Officer Admits Elgar Parishad Event ‘Had No Role’ in Bhima Koregaon Violence (The Wire / Dec 2022)
▪ Bhima Koregaon Violence: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight (The Wire / Jan 2022)
▪ 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)

In a case involving fake currency, Supreme Court gets real about the right to speedy trial

05/07/2024 Asha

The Leaflet / by The Leaflet

The Supreme Court has provided a timely reminder, as much to itself as to subordinate judiciary and the general public, that presumption of innocence and the right to a speedy trial cannot be counterfeited by ‘national security’.
IN a significant ruling, the Supreme Court has held that irrespective of the nature of the crime, an accused is entitled to a speedy trial.
The court has also remarked that “if the prosecuting agency and the court concerned have no wherewithal to protect the fundamental right to a speedy trial, then they should not oppose the bail petitions on the ground that the crime committed is serious.”
Read more

Also read:
▪ ‘Trial will take years & years & years:’ SC grants bail to Bhima Koregaon accused Gautam Navlakha (The Print / May 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)
▪ Inconsistencies in Bail Orders Mean Individual Liberty Is Now the Outcome of Judicial Lottery (The Wire / Oct 2022)
▪ How many years can an undertrial languish in jail without trial? Bombay High Court asks NIA on Bhima-Koregaon Violence (Free Press Journal / Jul 2021)

Release India’s Political Prisoners / Video: 10 Political prisoners of the Modi era

03/07/2024 Asha

Jacobin.com / by Safa Ahmed

Since reaching power, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has jailed political critics using bogus terrorism and incitement charges. But an electoral setback for his party offers hope of change in India and a crack in his authoritarian Hindutva order.
… There are those who do make it out of prison. But in one harrowing case, imprisonment under the UAPA became a death sentence. In 2018, violent clashes broke out between Dalits and Hindu militant groups in Bhima Koregaon, a village in Maharashtra state. Instead of arresting any militants, police in the state arrested sixteen eminent activists, academics, and lawyers over the next two years — all of whom were involved in civil rights work supporting marginalized Dalits and tribal Adivasi communities.
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Video: Meet 10 ‘political prisoners’ of the Narendra Modi regime in jail without trial

By The Telegraph

en | 4:45 | 2024
From Kashmir to Pune, from the barrage of detainees from the CAA-NRC protests to the Delhi riots case accused to the infamous Bhima Koregaon arrests, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time in office has been marked by a number of ‘political prisoners’ who remain indefinitely behind bars, with their trials still pending.
Watch video

Also Read:
▪ How The Indian Prison System Denies Basic Freedoms, Rights And Dignity To Political Prisoners (The Polis Project / June 2024)
▪ The Opposition Must Demand the Release of all Political Prisoners (The Wire / June 2024)
▪ Punished without trial: How India’s political prisoners are being denied basic rights in jail (Scroll.in / Aug 2022)
▪ India’s Hindu Nationalist Project Relies on Brutal Repression (Jacobinmag / April 2021)

India: Authorities must immediately repeal repressive new criminal laws

01/07/2024 Asha

Amensty.org / by Amnesty International

As three new criminal laws, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhinayam (BSA), come into effect today replacing three British-era laws in India, Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India said:
“The provisions of the amendments to and overhaul of the criminal laws in India would have debilitating consequences on the effective realization of the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and fair trial.”
Read full statement

Also read/watch:
▪ India: Arrests, Raids Target Critics of Government (Amnesty International / Oct 2023)
▪ AI Report: India’s exploitation of terrorism financing assessments to target the civil society (Amnesty.org / Sep 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)
▪ Fabricating Evidence Against Life and Liberty: Tampering with Fr. Stan Swamy’s computer and its implications for Bhima Koregaon case (Mumbai Rises to Save Democracy / Dec 2022)
▪ Leaked Data Shows Surveillance Net in Elgar Parishad Case May Have Crossed a Line (The Wire / July 2021)

PCI Conversations │ Ajaz Ashraf and Jenny Rowena discussing Bhima Koregaon

28/06/2024 Asha

by Press Club of India / @PCITweets (June 28):
As part of our #PCIConversation, a discussion on Ajaz Ashraf’s book “Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste” will be discussed
The guests are author himself and Miranda House College’s Jenny Rowena
29 June 2024 (Saturday), 5:30 PM onwards at Conference Hall, Press Club of India

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)
▪Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Book Review | Ajaz Ashraf’s Account Is A ‘Museum Of Memories’ For The Dispossessed

25/06/2024 Asha

Kashmir Times / by Gowhar Geelani

“A powerful account that reminds us that all-powerful States possess the power to silence dissenters, normalise fear in society, and criminalise opinions of free-thinking individuals and dreamers of equality, and rely on institutional memory to settle scores with dissenters at the time of its choosing.“
While reading journalist-author Ajaz Ashraf’s latest book “Bhima Koregaon Challenging Caste”, I was instantaneously reminded of Lavrentiy Beria, the longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe.
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Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)

▪ 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

▪ “Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein”

By Family Members and friends of BK16
Edition: June 2021
Language: Hindi
Pages: 69
Access a PDF copy of the book here (15MB)

The Opposition Must Demand the Release of all Political Prisoners

23/06/2024 Asha

The Opposition Must Demand the Release of all Political Prisoners

23/06/2024

The Wire / by Partho Sarothi Ray

It is the duty of a revitalised opposition to prevent the continuation of the darkness that has descended over India in the last 10 years.
The results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, although quite unexpected and surprising for many, has brought a fresh breath of life to the sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic Republic of India. Nay, it might have brought it back from the brink of the precipice into which it would have tumbled with another outright victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Read more

Also read:
▪ To Think of Modi 3.0 as Less Dangerous Would Be a Misreading (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | June 12, 2024)
▪ Who Does June 4 Belong to? (The Wire / June 5, 2024)

Colonial Reality of India’s Criminal Laws Remains Despite the New Hindi Names

21/06/2024 Asha

Colonial Reality of India’s Criminal Laws Remains Despite the New Hindi Names

21/06/2024

The Wire / by Rajshree Chandra

The argument that we are in the process of decolonizing laws is a bogus one and it reveals our hypocrisies more than anything else.
… Arundhati Roy today is now going to be being tried under many provisions of IPC along with the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for a speech she gave in 2010, 14 long years ago.
Fourteen years ago, she was charged with sedition (S. 124 A) based on a complaint that her speech (in Delhi) advocated separation of Kashmir from India and therefore “jeopardised public peace and security”. Fourteen years later, charges have been upgraded, and she is now also charged under the anti-terror law UAPA for reasons that are legally confounding but politically quite apparent.
Read more

SKM condemns prosecution sanction of Arundhati Roy, Showkat Hussain under UAPA

20/06/2024

Deccan Herald / pti

The Delhi LG, earlier last week, gave his sanction to prosecute Roy and Hussain for allegedly making provocative speeches at an event in 2010.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) on Thursday condemned Delhi LG V K Saxena’s approval to prosecute author Arundhati Roy and former Central University of Kashmir professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
… “The slapping of UAPA reflects that the present government, although cut down to size in recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, nonetheless wishes to continue with its older line of clamping down on any dissent and branding it as ‘anti-national’,” the organisation added.
The SKM claimed the National Investigation Agency has sent to jail 16 leading intellectuals and activists with “false charges” in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
Read more

Talons intact – Indian democracy is not free from fascism yet

22/06/2024

The Telegraph / by Asim Ali

The electoral setback for the BJP marks an important check on the accelerated process of “fascistization of the regime” as I had noted in my column for The Telegraph last month
The last fortnight has been marked by a widespread sentiment of relief at the failure of the Narendra Modi regime to come back with a full majority. The relief is understandable. The sentiment, which seems out of place, represents the exultation at the triumphant redemption of Indian democracy from the clutches of fascism.
Read more

▪ Video: PUCL and over hundred organisations present: Repeal UAPA – Persecution by Prosecution

Lawyers, the persecuted, their families and others will present how UAPA is being used to persecute activists and silence dissent. The 3 days will see State-wise sharing from AP, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, J&K, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana & UP

► Repeal UAPA – Day Three (en + … | 2h 51min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day Two (en +… | 2h 22min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day One (en + … | 2h 17min | Jan 2021)

Book Excerpt | Intellectual Insurgency and Mahesh Raut

19/06/2024 Asha

The Wire / by Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan

We are witnessing a pretend politics which lives on the time borrowed from a deferred revolution.
“I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes”

– Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question

It is not easy to write about the scholar and activist Mahesh Raut without sorrow and rage. Raut was a fellow of Prime Minister’s Rural Development programme; it has been five years since he was arrested on June 6, 2018. He is the youngest prisoner in the Bhima Koregaon case, currently awaiting the mercy of the judiciary for bail in Taloja central jail. His health has been deteriorating in prison.
Read more

Also read:
▪ SC to hear plea of activist seeking interim bail on June 21 (Legalworld.com / June 2024)
▪ ‘Ominous portents’: Why High Court staying its own bail orders in Bhima Koregaon case is troubling (Scroll.in / Dec 2023)
▪ In Jail for 5 Years, Activist Mahesh Raut Gets Bail in Elgar Parishad Case (The Wire / Sep 2023)
▪ Gadchiroli’s 300 Gram Sabhas Pass Resolution in Support of Activist Mahesh Raut (The Wire / Oct 2018)

Before Arundhati Roy, Writers, Human Rights Activists & Journalists Were Slapped With UAPA

18/06/2024 Asha

Outlook / by Outlook Web Desk

The draconian UAPA has drawn criticism from several Supreme Court judges. However, it continues to be used against prominent writers, activists and journalists.
A celebrated Booker Prize-winning author and human rights activist, Arundhati Roy became the latest target of India’s draconian law – Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, after Delhi’s Lieutenant General approved her prosecution on a complaint lodged 14 years ago. The approval comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP-led NDA came to power for the third time. Human rights organisations have accused the government of misusing the law to silence critics.
Since 2014, at least 6,900 UAPA cases have been lodged until 2020, according to NCRB data.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Meet 10 ‘political prisoners’ of the Narendra Modi regime in jail without trial (Telegraph / June 2024)
▪ Legal experts call for a repeal of UAPA over misuse and rights violations (Frontline / May 2024)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report
▪ How Governments Avoid Due Process by Declaring Groups as ‘Front Organisations’ of Banned Entities (The Wire / Sep 2020)