Background – Page 2 – free them all

Beating Brahminism The Way 500 Soldiers of Bhima Koregaon Did

29/12/2025 Asha

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

Beating Brahminism The Way 500 Soldiers of Bhima Koregaon Did

29/12/2025

Velivada / by Velivada

For most of the world, January 1 represents the start of a new calendar year. But for the Dalit-Bahujan community in India, January 1 is Shaurya Din (Day of Valour). It marks the anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon (1818), where 500 soldiers of the Mahar community, fighting under the British East India Company, delivered a crushing blow to the 28,000-strong army of Peshwa Baji Rao II.
This was not merely a military skirmish between a colonial power and a local kingdom. It was a war of liberation – a historic reckoning where the oppressed took up arms against the very architects of their degradation. To understand the victory of the 500 is to understand the blueprint for beating Brahminism today.
Read more

The Shaurya Saga: Pune Prepares for 20 Lakh Visitors at Bhima Koregaon!

28/12/2025

Pune Mirror / by Aashlesha Kakde

Pune is poised to experience an unprecedented influx of people this New Year’s Day. As the city readies itself for the 209th Bhima Koregaon Vijay Stambh Shaurya Day on January 1, 2026, the local administration is making every effort to ensure that the event at Perne village is truly remarkable.
With an astounding 20 lakh attendees anticipated to flock to the memorial, here’s your comprehensive guide to the happenings on the ground!
Read more

Also read:
▪ Bhima Koregaon commission gets 18th extension (Hindustan Times / Aug 2025)
▪ Alternative reading of Bhima Koregaon: A Maharashtra outfit is trying to advance Dalit cause from Hindutva orbit (The Indian Express / Apr 2025)
▪ 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 │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati │ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)
▪ Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 2018)
▪ The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2018)

‘It’s like Groundhog Day’: Waiting decades for justice in India’s overburdened court system

22/12/2025 Asha

CBC News / by Salimah Shivji

Backlog of cases in country’s courts would take several hundred years to clear, experts say
The frustration and weariness crept into Sanjay Goel’s voice as he stared at the giant stack of handwritten court documents in front of him.
He was on one of his countless visits from Vancouver to Mumbai, India, to fight for justice in the brutal killing of his mother and was struggling to describe the excruciating delays in criminal court proceedings.
…
Mumbai activist Sudhir Dhawale is familiar with the pain of waiting for a judgment.
He sat in jail for 6½ years, two of which were in solitary confinement, waiting for bail.
Read more

Also read:
▪ A Key Conspiratorial Meeting May Be A Fabrication: Why Umar Khalid & Other Muslim Activists Should Get Bail (article 14 / Dec 2025)
▪ Justice On Hold: How India’s Trial Courts Are Creating a New Class of Political Prisoners—Those Accused Of ‘Terrorism’(article 14 / Dec 2025)
▪ In Surendra Gadling’s case, adjournment becomes the verdict (Frontline / Aug 2025)
▪ Eternal adjournments, impractical riders mar precious Constitutional values (DT Next / Mar 2025)
▪ Bail for Bhima Koregaon accused highlights extraordinary delay in trial (Scroll.in / Jan 2025)

Justice On Hold: How India’s Trial Courts Are Creating a New Class of Political Prisoners—Those Accused Of ‘Terrorism’

15/12/2025 Asha

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

Article 14 / by Nidah Kaiser And Tamanna Pankaj

With a conviction rate of 3.1% over four years in cases filed under India’s anti-terrorism law, and despite repeated Supreme Court orders to the contrary, India’s trial, special and ‘fast-track’ courts routinely detain activists for years without trial, often only granting bail after higher-court intervention. This systemic delay defies constitutional right and has created a de facto class of political prisoners.
India today jails scores of political activists under a slew of laws, primarily the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), keeping many in custody for years before trial—often only freeing them after bail orders by higher courts.
Take the Bhima Koregaon (BK-16) case, where 16 activists were arrested under UAPA in 2018.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Inside the NIA’s ‘Perfect’ Conviction Record: How Coercive Detentions Are Driving Guilty Pleas (The Wire / 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)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report

Inside the NIA’s ‘Perfect’ Conviction Record: How Coercive Detentions Are Driving Guilty Pleas

10/12/2025 Asha

Inside the NIA’s ‘Perfect’ Conviction Record: How Coercive Detentions Are Driving Guilty Pleas

10/12/2025

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

A year after the National Investigation Agency boasted of a 100% conviction rate, an investigation by The Wire finds that prolonged detention, near-automatic bail denials and pressure from investigators are pushing dozens of accused, mostly Muslims, to plead guilty before their trials have even begun.
…
After the NIA began registering cases in 2009, trials did not commence for the first six to seven years, except in a few cases. The restrictive bail clause, Section 43 D(5), introduced in the UAPA in 2008, making it virtually impossible for an accused person to be released on bail, ensured that those accused remained in jail during this time.
Read more

10,400 arrested under UAPA from 2019-2023, only 335 convicted

05/12/2025

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

Jammu and Kashmir had the highest number of arrests under the law, followed by Uttar Pradesh, data tabled in Parliament showed.
A total of 10,440 persons were arrested between 2019 and 2023 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Union government has told Parliament. Of these, only 335 persons were convicted under the anti-terror law.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Years Without Trial, Then Pushing Guilty Pleas: Understanding the NIA’s Playbook (The Wire / Dec 2025)
▪ Judicial Backlog: 90 Thousand Cases Pending in SC, Almost 5 Crore In District Courts (Outlook / 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)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report
▪ Bhima-Koregaon case transferred to NIA to compromise independent probe: Front Line Defenders (SabrangIndia / Jan 2020)

‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

03/12/2025 Asha

Scroll.in / by Ratna Singh

Digital rights groups warn that forcing an app onto every device could allow the government to spy on Indians and even control their devices.
… On social media, founder and editor of technology policy website Medianama, Nikhil Pahwa, illustrated just what this ability to control a user’s mobile phone would look like. “A government application can also be used to implant files on your device,” he said. “[It] has happened before, in the Bhima Koregaon case where documents were allegedly put on laptops and used to frame a conspiracy.”
Read more

Also read:
▪ ‘Malware Evidence in Their Own Reporting?’ Global Experts Reiterate Bhima Koregaon Reports, Seek End to Injustice (The Wire / Nov 2025)
▪ How an unsophisticated malware attack became India’s biggest state-sponsored cybercrime (The Polis Project / Mar 2025)
▪ Incriminating evidence planted in computers: The Trojan solved the Bhima Koregaon case! (Anchored Narratives / Jan 2023)
▪ Hackers Planted Files to Frame an Indian Priest Who Died in Custody (Wired / Dec 2022)
▪ Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired.com / June 2022)
▪ Leaked Data Shows Surveillance Net in Elgar Parishad Case May Have Crossed a Line (The Wire / July 2021)
▪ They were Accused of plotting to overthrow the Modi government – The evidence was planted, a new report says (Washington Post / Feb 2021)

India’s prisoners of conscience and the politics of waiting

02/12/2025 Asha

Scroll.in / by Sahil Hussain Choudhury

The law speaks the language of liberty, but power uses to the grammar of postponement.
In The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, Anand Teltumbde notes that incarceration does not only test the body – it also tests whether the mind will refuse to surrender. …
The National Crime Records Bureau’s Prison Statistics India 2023 shows that nearly 73.5% of India’s prisoners are undertrials – people not yet convicted of any crime. Behind that abstraction lies a quieter truth: for most who enter the system, justice never arrives; only waiting does.
Read more

Also read:

▪ The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir
Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256
Read more/order
▪ What Freedom Means For India’s Political Prisoners (Outlook / Apr 2025)
▪ BK-16 Prison Diaries: Sudhir Dhawale’s poem, “Prisoners of Consciousness” (The Polis Project / Mar 2025)
▪ Who Is a ‘Political Prisoner’? Rona Wilson Says Caste and Religion Are Key to the Answer (The Wire / Feb 2025)

▪ From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada

Author: Sudha Bhardwaj
Publishing Date: Oct 2023
Publisher: Juggernaut
Pages: 216
Read more/order

▪ The Feared – Conversations with Eleven Political Prisoners

Author: Neeta Kolhatkar
Publishing Date: Dec 2024
Publisher: S&S India
Pages: 272
Read more/order

▪ 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

▪ Punished without trial: How India’s political prisoners are being denied basic rights in jail (Scroll.in / Aug 2022)
▪ Who is a political prisoner? Time to define one (CivilSociety / Jul 2022)

Counting the Caged: What India’s prison data refuses to see

03/11/2025 Asha

Sabrang / by CJP Team

Two years after NCRB’s Prison Statistics India 2023 report was published, the numbers still read less like history and more like prophecy
The NCRB Prison Statistics Report, 2023, detailed an already stressed carceral system, housing 5.82 lakh inmates in a system sanctioned for 4.25 lakh, with undertrial prisoners making up almost 78% of all prisoners. Other than numbers and statistics being added to the data, nothing changed substantively between the original numbers and now.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Notes From Inside Taloja Prison (Outlook | by Mahesh Raut | Jun 2025)
▪ Inside Taloja Prison: A Study | By Mahesh Raut (Outlook / May 2025)
▪ Many Prisoners at Taloja Jail Not Produced Before Court For Years, Reveals Survey by Surendra Gadling and Sagar Gorkhe (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ How Long is Too Long? – On the Maximum Period that an Undertrial Prisoner can be Detained (Constitutional Law and Philosophy | by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling | Oct 2024)

Bhima Koregaon probe panel issues show cause notice to ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray

31/10/2025 Asha

Graphic by Arun Ferreira & Vernon Gonsalves

Bhima Koregaon probe panel issues show cause notice to ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray

31/10/2025

Hindustan Times / by Nadeem Inamdar

The notice was issued after Thackeray failed to respond to an application seeking the production of documents related to the case
A commission probing the 2018 Koregaon Bhima violence on Thursday issued a show-cause notice to former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray for failing to respond to an application seeking the production of documents related to the case.
Read more

Koregaon Bhima violence case: Probe panel issues show cause notice to Uddhav Thackeray

30/10/2025

mid-day / by Mid-day online correspondent

The inquiry panel, headed by former High Court Chief Justice J. N. Patel, questioned in the notice why an application filed by Prakash Ambedkar, leader of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and a witness in the case, seeking a bailable warrant against Uddhav Thackeray, should not be allowed
The commission investigating the Koregaon Bhima violence case of 2018 has issued a show cause notice to former Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray for failing to respond to a request for documents related to the case, reported the PTI.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Koregaon Bhima Probe: Spotlight on Uddhav Thackeray (Pune Mirror / Oct 2025)
▪ Bhima Koregaon commission gets 18th extension (Hindustan Times / Aug 2025)
▪ Alternative reading of Bhima Koregaon: A Maharashtra outfit is trying to advance Dalit cause from Hindutva orbit (The Indian Express / Apr 2025)
▪ 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 │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati │ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)
▪ Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 2018)
▪ The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2018)

Mumbai Police Book TISS Students For Event On GN Saibaba Death Anniversary; Rekindles 2017 Incident

14/10/2025 Asha

Mumbai Police Book TISS Students For Maoist-Linked GN Saibaba Death Anniversary; Rekindles 2017 Incident Of Taking Students To Naxal Training Camps In Forest

14/10/2025

The Communemag / by The Commune

The Mumbai Police on 13 October 2025 registered a First Information Report (FIR) against at least ten students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) for allegedly organizing an event to commemorate the death anniversary of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba.
… This incident is not the first time TISS has been linked to allegations involving Naxalite activities. In 2018, as per an India Today report, the Maharashtra Police had claimed that accused activist Mahesh Raut, an alumnus of TISS, had taken students from the institute to meet underground Maoist leaders in forest areas.
Read more

When a spontaneous gathering of students is criminalised

15/10/2025

Groundxero / by freespeechcollective

Recording the sequence of events and observations on the current events unfolding in TISS, Mumbai, from students’ perspective
What is the price of political engagement and learning in a higher educational institute in India? It seems that young people who seek to read, talk to each other and understand any issue are slapped with FIRs before they can fully make up their minds on what stance to take.
On Sunday, 12 October 2025, students at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai gathered to read a few poems written by Professor GN Saibaba to mark his death anniversary. They gathered in a peaceful manner, read the poems, placed a few candles around a photograph of Professor Saibaba and dispersed—all in about ten minutes. For many of the students, this year has been the first time they have learnt of the scholar and activist’s life, work, and death. The gathering came as a spontaneous response to discovering his poems.
Read more

Also read/watch:
▪ G.N. Saibaba’s Lifelong Campaign Was Against the Violence of Silencing (The Wire | by Rona Wilson | Oct 2024)
▪ G.N. Saibaba’s Life Is Not Just a Chronicle of His Times, but Also What the Times Refused to Chronicle (The Wire / Oct 2024)
▪ Surendra Gadling’s Computer Was Attacked, Incriminating Documents Planted: Arsenal Consulting (The Wire / July 2021)

▪ Video: State’s Job is to Serve People, Not Punish Them: G N Saibaba

en | 38:33 | 2024

Newsclick / by Newsclick Team

Former DU professor G.N. Saibaba, who passed away in Hyderabad on Saturday, had recounted his harrowing ordeal during 10 years in jail at a press conference in New Delhi in March this year.
Watch video

Delhi University Vice Chancellor’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’ draws ire

08/10/2025 Asha

PUCL condemns regressive and defamatory views of DU Vice Chancellor Prof. Yogesh Singh: At odds with Constitutional values

09/10/2025

Countercurrents.org / by People’s Union For Civil Liberties

People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) India, is shocked at the troubling views expressed by Dr Yogesh Singh, professor and Vice Chancellor Delhi University on 28th September, 2025 in a speech titled “Naxal Mukt Bharat: Ending Red Terror Under Modi’s Leadership, Why Campuses are Targets?’
…
In the over 20 minute speech, replete with unsubstantiated and defamatory statements about alleged “urban naxals” on campus, Prof Singh named Delhi university’s professors and student activists charged and imprisoned under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, including members of the feminist student group Pinjar Tod (Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal), charged in the Delhi riots case and Prof Hany Babu and professors Dr Shoma Sen and Dr Anand Teltumbde (mispronounced by Prof Singh as Teltumbedke), charged in the Bhima Koregaon case.
Read more

Delhi University V-C’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’, Pinjra Tod movement draws ire

08/10/2025

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh’s speech alleging the presence of “Urban Naxals” in universities and criticising movements like ‘Pinjra Tod’ has triggered protests from students and faculty.
… Referring to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, Singh named DU professor Hany Babu and academics Rona Wilson and Anand Teltumbde, saying, “And these are not isolated cases.”
Read more

Also read:
▪ As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent (The Wire / Jul 2025)
▪ 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)
▪ From ‘tukde tukde gang’ to ‘urban Naxal’: How media trials enable the government to stifle dissent (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)