Repression – free them all

Indira Jaising sounds alarm on democracy & dissent / India’s Anti-Terror Law and the Punishment of the Unconvicted

19/05/2026 Asha

Two judgments, no single standard: Why terror law UAPA’s bail threshold isn’t a straight line

21/05/2026

The Print / by Sahaj Sankaran

SC’s contradiction over bail in terror cases has revived questions over whether the stringent Watali test or the liberty-focused Najeeb ruling should guide UAPA jurisprudence.
When a two-judge Supreme Court bench Monday criticised a co-ordinate bench’s decision denying bail in January to Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, both accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the Delhi riots case, the criticism raised a much broader issue: how should courts decide on bail under the anti-terror law?
… In the the 2022 Jyoti Jagtap vs NIA case, the court did not consider Najeeb at all, implicitly arguing that Najeeb had no applicability even though the defendant had been in prison for two years by that point. It took another three years for Jagtap, arrested for her alleged ties to the organisers of the 2017 Elgar Parishad event, to secure bail.
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Not defending civil society judiciary’s biggest failure Advocate Indira Jaising

19/05/2026

The Week / by pti

The judiciary’s inability to protect civil society from persecution is its “biggest failure”, writes senior advocate Indira Jaising in her new book “The Constitution Is My Home”, alleging that political opponents, activists and human rights defenders are being systematically targeted through criminal law.
… Referring to the prosecution of late Delhi University professor G N Saibaba under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), she criticised judicial observations that shifted the focus of criminal law from “overt acts to beliefs and ideas”.
She also criticised the use of the UAPA and the sedition provision under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code against activists and human rights defenders in cases linked to the 2020 Delhi riots and the Bhima Koregaon violence.
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▪ Indira Jaising interview: Senior advocate sounds alarm on democracy & dissent in modern India

en | 19:16min | 2026
Interview by: Kanu Sarda
Camera: Sanjay Ahlawat
Editor: Syam Krishnan

In this exclusive interview with THE WEEK, Indira Jaising discusses her new memoir, The Constitution Is My Home, and shares her thoughts on the biggest constitutional and judicial challenges facing India today. From the Bhima Koregaon case and judicial accountability to women in the Supreme Court and the criminalisation of dissent, Jaising offers a candid and deeply personal reflection on law, democracy and power.
Watch video

India’s Anti-Terror Law and the Punishment of the Unconvicted

19/05/2026

Countercurrents.org / by Utkarsh Mishra

The statistics released by the government paint a troubling picture. From 2019 to 2023, India arrested 10,440 individuals using its strictest anti-terror law, but only 335 were convicted. This number didn’t come from a human rights organisation; it was shared by the Union Home Ministry itself during a session in Parliament in December 2025. The National Crime Records Bureau put together these figures, and it amounts to a mere 3.2% conviction rate.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Voices From Prison | A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Unlawful: Editorial on the Bhima Koregaon case and denial of liberty under UAPA (The Telegraph / Feb 2026)
▪ Inside the NIA’s ‘Perfect’ Conviction Record: How Coercive Detentions Are Driving Guilty Pleas (The Wire / 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)
▪ Legal experts call for a repeal of UAPA over misuse and rights violations (Frontline / May 2024)

▪ Report: UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR (PUCL / Sep 2022)
Download report

Wages of fury: Noida’s wake-up call

09/05/2026 Asha

Frontline / by Anand Teltumbde

The Noida worker protest is local in trigger but national in meaning. It asks an important question: why must every wage demand now be branded a conspiracy?
On April 13, 2026, the industrial township of Noida—a satellite city of Delhi with over 10,000 factories and service units—saw scenes long feared by the ruling establishment. Thousands of workers spilled onto the streets in a cascading uprising that had begun three days earlier and now spread across sector belts. Their demands were elemental: a living wage, an eight-hour workday, and the basic dignity of being treated as human beings rather than disposable inputs in a global supply chain.
Read more

Also read:
▪ How 5 Reliance Workers Fighting For A Better Deal Found Themselves In Jail On Terrorism Charges (Article 14 / July 2021)
▪ Bail After 3 Years for the Incarcerated Mumbai Electric Employees Union Workers (groundxero, June 2021)

Umar Khalid: A Prisoner of Conscience

02/05/2026 Asha

The Wire / by Clifton D’ Rozario

This is a speech by from a book discussion on ‘Umar Khalid and His World’ held on April 28, 2026 at BIC, Bengaluru.
…
Whether it is Bhima Koregaon, or the anti-CAA protests or Adivasi struggles, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has become the toolkit to imprison dissenters. The UAPA stands as one of the most enduring remnants of colonial rule. Under the British laws of this nature existed for one purpose alone: to criminalise resistance and imprison those who dared to speak against the coloniser. It is a matter of profound shame that more than 75 years after Independence, in a Republic that claims fidelity to liberty, constitutional morality and democratic dissent, the State continues to preserve and weaponise the very architecture of repression once used by our oppressors.
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▪ UMAR KHALID AND HIS WORLD: an anthology

Editors: Anirban Bhattacharya, Banojyotsna Lahiri, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Publisher: Three Essays Collective
Publication date: Feb 2026
Pages: 340

This is an anthology of writings on and by Umar Khalid, edited by his friends, highlighting his ideas and the events that have been defining moments in his journey since he was imprisoned. In the process it underscores the injustice where the trial itself is punishment, the widespread support and sympathy for Umar Khalid, and the perfidy of the State. In talking of his world rather than just him, it also brings to life the related dimensions of democracy and authoritarianism, and that he is one among many prisoners of conscience. The book has contributions from eminent intellectuals, among them scholars, mediapersons, lawyers and human rights activists, as well as other prisoners under UAPA, and is enriched with songs and poetry of the anti-CAA-NRC protests, and statements and tributes from friends and family members.

In India, trial happens by extended detention

26/04/2026 Asha

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

The Tribune / by Hammad Safraz

Those who question the government’s policies on rights and freedoms, find themselves in an endless chase for justice
The world’s largest democracy, or so the slogan goes, has perfected a quiet kind of cruelty against those who speak truth to power. For activists and journalists who question Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the punishment is arbitrary detention without trial, stretched endlessly into a legal void where no charge is filed and no freedom is granted. …
The first big case, Ria Chakrabarty said, was actually that of anti-caste and tribal activists who rallied at Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra and were later attacked by Hindu nationalist mobs. … Both the Supreme Court and the UN have judged that many of the detainees were held with no evidence of terrorism. “But this case is important to understand,” she said, “because then the Indian Home Ministry started using the same playbook against Muslim activists who would lead protests subjected to Hindu nationalist violence, and later, primarily Sikh farmers protesting farm laws.”
Read more

Also read:
▪ IAPL demands release of advocate Surendra Gadling from Maharashtra jail (The Sisat Daily / March 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)
▪ Bail for Bhima Koregaon accused highlights extraordinary delay in trial (Scroll.in / Jan 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)

The End of Naxalism, the End of Accountability

22/04/2026 Asha

The Wire / by Nandini Sundar

As the government claims victory over the CPI (Maoist), a more consequential defeat is being obscured: the collapse of constitutional accountability and the normalisation of impunity.
…
Among the many ironies of this confused and legally directionless ‘end of Naxalism’, is the fate of those arrested on charges of being Maoist sympathisers. At one end, we have the human rights lawyer Surendra Gadling who has been in jail since 2018, along with the rest of the BK 16 who are out on bail but still suffer from a protracted trial despite ample proof that police ‘evidence’ was fabricated. At the other end, the youth leaders of the Moolvasi Bachao Manch in Bastar, like Raghu Midiyami, Suneeta Pottam and others, have been jailed for over two years under UAPA, along with some other 40 activists at different times. Even simple rights like an operation to fix Raghu Midiyami’s broken finger are being resisted by the NIA. The MBM waged an entirely constitutional struggle, invoking the 5th Schedule of the Constitution and PESA to defend their lands. Evidently a peaceful movement of locals, in the face of an intensified mining push, is now a greater threat to the national security state than even the Maoists.
Hundreds of other innocent Adivasis continue to languish in jail, going through the tortuous legal system. Stan Swamy was targeted because his PIL in the Jharkhand High Court, based on interviews with 102 undertrials, showed that 97% of those arrested on charges of being Maoist actually had no relation to them.
Read more

Also read:
▪ 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 | Half-Freedom For Adivasis Jailed On Maoist Allegations (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | From Forest To Prison, When Security Laws Criminalise Adivasi Resistance (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Will anti-Naxal drive pave way for mining giants? (The New Indian Express / May 2025)
▪ Top intellectual targeted for role as anti-displacement activist, opponent of ‘corporate loot’ (Sep 2024)
▪ Who Is Suneeta Pottam, the Tribal Rights Activist Picked up for Unknown Cases Earlier This Month? (The Wire / Jun 2024)
▪ Encountering Resistance – State Policy for Development in Gadchiroli (PUDR / June 2018)
▪ Condemn the State Sponsored Massacre Scripted as ‘Encounter’ in Gadchiroli and Bijapur in Central India (wssnet.wordpress.com / May 2018)
▪ A study of Undertrials in Jharkhand (Sanhati / by Bagaicha Research Team / Feb 2016)

Artists, Educators, Publishers Speak Out Against ‘Rising Attempts’ to Stifle Their Voices

12/03/2026 Asha

The Wire / by The Wire Staff

“These attacks have taken place in various forms, but each follows a pattern of impunity enabled by a rising culture of intolerance and suppression.”
A collective of artists, authors, publishers and educators have issued a statement condemning “rising attempts” to curtail free speech and creative voices in India. Referring to incidents including Anand Teltumbde’s panel being cancelled at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and water being thrown at historian S. Irfan Habib, the signatories say that “these disruptions set a dangerous precedent if left unaddressed in the current political climate”.
Read more / the full statement

Also read:
▪ Mumbai Press Club Bars Elgar Parishad Defendants’ Entry, Issues Show-Cause Notice to Member (The Wire / March 2026)
▪ ‘Controversy best avoided’: Kala Ghoda festival director after Anand Teltumbde book event cancelled (Scroll.in / Feb 2026)
▪ Stan Swamy Lecture Cancelled – A Case Study in India’s Shrinking Space for Dissent (The Print / Aug 2025)

CASR Condemns NIA Notice to Anti-Displacement Activist Damodar Turi

23/02/2026 Asha

Countercurrents.org / by Campaign Against State Repression (CASR)

The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) strongly condemns the recent actions of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Hyderabad, which has issued a notice to Damodar Turi, a long-time anti-displacement activist, in connection with FIR RC-04/2025/HYDERABAD. This case, initiated two months ago, is yet another example of the state’s ongoing harassment of individuals who challenge the exploitation and marginalization of indigenous communities, particularly those resisting displacement due to mining and industrialization.
Damodar Turi, a dedicated activist for over three decades, has been at the forefront of movements against the forced displacement of Adivasis and indigenous communities in Jharkhand and across India. As a founding member of the Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (VVJVA), a pan-India anti-displacement organization, Damodar Turi has worked alongside other prominent human rights advocates, including Stan Swamy and B.D. Sharma, to raise awareness about the systematic dispossession of tribal people from their land in the name of development.
Read full statement

Also read:
▪ Voices From Prison | Half-Freedom For Adivasis Jailed On Maoist Allegations (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | From Forest To Prison, When Security Laws Criminalise Adivasi Resistance (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Will anti-Naxal drive pave way for mining giants? (The New Indian Express / May 2025)
▪ Top intellectual targeted for role as anti-displacement activist, opponent of ‘corporate loot’ (Sep 2024)
▪ Jharkhand police to probe into Maoist links with Stan Swamy’s ‘Bagaicha’, 63 other frontal organisations (The New Indian Express / Sep 2023)
▪ CASR: Release activists incarcerated in Bhima Koregaon Case (Countercurrents.org / June 2023)
▪ NIA Opposes Stan Swamy’s Bail; Calls PUCL, Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan ‘Maoist Fronts’ (The Wire / Jan 2021)

When Speaking Truth Becomes A Crime

21/02/2026 Asha

Outlook / by Pritha Vashisth

In its February 1 issue, Thou Shalt Not Dissent, Outlook turns to the voices of those who have lived this reality, mapping the human cost of repression, imprisonment and unyielding courage in the face of state power

“I am not a silent spectator, but part of the game and ready to pay the price whatever be it.”
When Stan Swamy spoke these words, he was 85 years old, physically frail but unyielding in spirit. Arrested in 2020 in connection with the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, the Jesuit priest and Adivasi rights activist became the oldest person in India to be charged under anti-terror laws. Months later, with his bail application still pending, he died in custody, his life caught in limbo between accusation and justice.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Voices From Prison: Imprisonment Sends A Calculated Message To Everyone Else (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison | A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence (Outlook / Jan 2026)

▪ Voices From Prison: Mahesh Raut | A Broken Prison System Is In Dire Need Of Critical Care

22/01/2026

Outlook / by Mahesh Raut

Mahesh Raut, the youngest accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, was granted interim bail on medical grounds. Many prisoners have no hope.
What constitutes freedom? What does it constitute for the person who is confined or for the one who comes out of jail, only to get entangled in another web of chains; some similar, but for others, different from what they experienced behind bars. In a prison, your identity is reduced to just a number. You are dehumanised at the whims of authorities and burdened by numerous hurdles and difficulties to secure bail. Many are not able to come out of prison even after securing bail due to financial constraints. All these factors take a toll on the physical and mental health of prisoners.
Read more

▪ Voices From Prison: ‘In Jail, I Measured Time From One Court Date to Another’

21/01/2026

Outlook / by Shoma Sen

Women’s rights activist and professor Shoma Sen, who was arrested in 2018 for her alleged involvement in the Bhima Koregaon riots, writes how in prisons, time comes to a standstill, literally
Though it is true that I did time, it appears more as if time did me. One cloudy evening, on June 21, 2018, when I was being taken to the Yerawada jail in Pune, I knew that watches were not allowed in jail, yet I had clung on to my basic Titan watch. I had to submit it at the gate. It was returned to me, looking like a museum relic, almost six years later. Time, trapped in a brown sarkari envelope, sealed in a metal box. Time that had stopped ticking.
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▪ Me Coming Out Alive Is A Miracle: Hany Babu, Bhima-Koregaon Accused, On Life Behind Bars

21/01/2026

Outlook / by Hany Babu M.T.

More than five years after his arrest under the UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case, former Delhi University professor Hany Babu was granted bail in December 2025. He shares his experience of prison life.
Mornings start very early in jail, but they never come with an air of freedom. It has only been three to four weeks since I came out; the bail arrived quite late for me. Five years is a long time compared to my co-accused. Throughout these five years, hope never left my sight, even when I contracted Covid. But there were indeed times when a little despair did creep in.
Read more

▪ Correctional Facility Or The World Of Endless Repetition, Solitude and Boredom?

21/01/2026

Outlook / by Rona Wilson

The prison system in India, persistently mediated and nourished by its colonial and retributive sensibilities, cannot be wished away by just changing the names of the prisons as correctional facilities, writes Rona Wilson, accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
I had trouble in my barrack with some of the inmates smoking heavily beside me and some among them playing ludo till the wee hours. As the game intensifies with gambling, so does smoking and use of tobacco. I requested the officer-in-charge of my circle to intervene.
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▪ Voices From Prison: Life After Jail Is Tough, But Surveillance, Harassment Continue, Says Sudha Bharadwaj

20/01/2026

Outlook / by Sudha Bharadwaj

I am enormously relieved that the separation from my only daughter, Maaysha, has ended. We can speak to each other every day.
A couple of weeks ago, cops in civil dress—or so they claimed to be—arrived in the society where I live in a friend’s accommodation on rent. The police have my mobile number, which, no doubt, they monitor regularly. Besides, I report to the local police station every 14 days, and I regularly attend court dates, at least once every 15 days, if not more frequently. Despite this, the police did not bother to call me.
Read more

▪ Voices From Prison: In The Isolation of the Anda Ward, We Dared To Sing, Writes Gautam Navlakha

20/01/2026

Outlook / by Gautam Navlakha

I realised that the more intense the sense of despair, the harder hope kicks in.

‘Those who speak of humanity in this system
Are thrown into prison to acquaint them
With the vocabulary of ‘criminology’’’
— Varavara Rao, Schools and Prisons

Hope and despair are basic human emotions and I believe that all human beings, now and then, swing between these two ends of the spectrum in life. I experienced these emotions acutely during my time in prison and captivity.
Read more

▪ Voices From Prison: Alienating A Poet From A Language He Deeply Loves Is Painful, Writes Varavara Rao’s Daughter

20/01/2026

Outlook / by P Vanava

The poet and activist was jailed in connection with caste violence that erupted in 2018 in Bhima Koregaon. He was 78 then. Though he was released on medical grounds in 2022, he is still confined to Mumbai. In this first-person account, his daughter Pavana writes about how multiple incarcerations could not break her father’s strength and soul
…
This wasn’t his first arrest; he has been arrested many times in the past, since the Emergency in 1975, for his political activism. I was a newborn baby (a month old), when appa was arrested.
Read more

▪ Voices From Prison: Bail Is Little Solace As I Lost My Life Anyway, Says Anand Teltumbde

19/01/2026

Outlook / by Anand Teltumbde

We became victims of two things—unjust investigation and a media trial that was used as a weapon. The Media Trial was Deeply Painful.
The tragic dimension of jail has been exhaustively mined. What remains scandalously underexplored is its comic genius. Prison is a factory of absurdity, running at full capacity every day, and I made it a habit to collect its specimens—especially during the so-called free hours, when the cells were opened each morning. This ritual began with the ceremonial clanking of batons, as guards slid them menacingly across steel bars, producing a sound—less like an alarm than a declaration of sovereignty.
Read more

Surendra Gadling and the justice that must be seen to be denied

16/02/2026 Asha

Frontline / by Ajaz Ashraf

The human rights lawyer is the only one of the Bhima Koregaon-16 still in jail. Seven years on, charges have not even been framed against him in a case built on a surrendered Maoist’s statement.
From 1998, the year in which Minal married Nagpur-based lawyer Surendra Gadling, she would urge him to lodge a complaint every time he told her about the police issuing threats to him. Gadling had incurred their wrath because of fighting cases, often pro bono, of poor Adivasis jailed for being Maoist. His triumphs suggested that either the police were guilty of shoddy investigations or, worse, guilty of foisting false cases on them.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Explained: The 2016 Surjagarh arson case, the Elgaar link, and why the Supreme Court is intervening now (The Indian Express / Jan 2026)
▪ In Surendra Gadling’s case, adjournment becomes the verdict (Frontline / Aug 2025)
▪ 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

▪ Surendra Gadling’s Computer Was Attacked, Incriminating Documents Planted: Arsenal Consulting (The Wire / July 2021)

New anthology stands in solidarity with Umar Khalid / Lecture on Umar Khalid Highlights UAPA’s Chilling Effect

11/02/2026 Asha

“Widen the circle”: New anthology stands in solidarity with incarcerated activist Umar Khalid

19/02/2026

Maktoob / by Fida Fahima

Released on Tuesday at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, the book “Umar Khalid and His World: An Anthology” seeks to “widen the circle of companionship” around anti-CAA activist Umar Khalid and serve as a tribute to those jailed or targeted for speaking out against injustice, the organisers said.
… The book further accuses the regime of responding to dissent with a “brazen witch-hunt,” referencing cases such as Bhima Koregaon and the Delhi riots, and alleging that misinformation and media trials were deployed to incarcerate what it terms “foot soldiers of the Constitution.”
Read more

Mumbai Lecture on Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam Bail Denial Highlights UAPA’s Chilling Effect

15/02/2026

The Wire / by Nishtha Sood

Speakers at the ninth Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture said the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam under UAPA threatens the right to protest and deepens fears of institutional failure.
… Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Sudha Bharadwaj were among those in attendance.
Read more

When The Personal Became Political At Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture

11/02/2026

Outlook India / by Pritha Vashisth

Organised by Innocence Network India, the Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture focused this year on the prolonged denial of bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.
… Among those present were individuals out on bail in the Bhima Koregaon case, often referred to as the BK 16, including Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, and Hany Babu. There were also people who had faced incarceration in cases such as the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts before eventually being acquitted. Some sat quietly taking notes. Others listened with folded arms. A few wiped away tears.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Incarceration As Politics: A Timeline Of Political Prisoners In Independent India (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Voices From Prison Series: Of Lives Stolen For Dissent (Outlook / Jan 2026)
▪ Shadows of Judicial Indiscipline: On the Supreme Court’s bail denial to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam (The Leaflet / Jan 2026)