Firstpost / by Sai Priya Kodidala
Varavara Rao’s poetry, which evolved over six decades, reflects and critiques modern social history, balancing it with a consistent and hopeful quest for freedom.
*
When crime becomes authority
And hunts down people branding them criminals
Everyone with a voice who keeps silent
Becomes a criminal.
`Whose side are you on?´
*
Read more
Counter Currents / by Atul and Sandeep Pandey
Professor Sudha Bharadwaj has been in jail since August 2018. She was taken into police custody on 26 August 2018 on suspicion of being involved in Maoist terror activities after Republic TV claimed that she had allegedly written a letter to Maoists and was conspiring to create public disorder and unrest in India. The channel felt no shame in broadcasting that the elderly Professor was planning to murder the Prime-Minister of India. The police arrested her subsequently and she has been kept in jail continuously since then.
Read more
25/07/2020
By Amnesty India
Varavara Rao’s daughter, Pendyala Pavana tells Amnesty International India that the National Investigative Agency is being vindictive and cruel to her father.
Listen to interview
24/07/2020
The Wire / by The Wire Staff
24/07/2020
Other than a confirmation about his positive COVID-19 test, Rao’s family says in the letter, they have received no information whatsoever about his health.
New Delhi: Unable to access information about Varavara Rao’s health from hospital authorities, his family has written to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Rao, who tested positive for COVID-19 and has several co-morbidities, is currently at Mumbai’s Nanavati Hospital.
Read more
24/07/2020
Live Law / by Nitish Kashyap
The family of jailed Telugu poet and literary critic Varavara Rao, who recently tested positive for Covid-19 and is currently undergoing treatment at Nanavati Hospital, have written to the National Human Rights Commission seeking their urgent intervention and directions to hospital and jail authorities to provide regular official health updates to them.
Read more
The Indian Express / by Colin Gonsalves
The observation of the Court in Bharadwaj’s case that the decision as to whether a document is admissible in evidence or not will have to wait for the trial stage is unbelievable. Courts routinely exclude inadmissible documents or statements (such as hearsay) from consideration while deciding bail applications.
Read more
The News Minute / by Mitun MK
Kranti was one of the two journalists and eight activists across the country whose residence was raided by the Maharashtra police on August 28 2018.
Telugu journalist Tekula Kranti, a member of Revolutionary Writers Association has been issued a notice by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Elgar Parishad- Maoist link case. The NIA has asked the journalist to appear for questioning at the Mumbai office on July 24.
Read more
The Indian Express / by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Anand Teltumbde, one of India’s important and courageous thinkers, just turned 70 in prison. He, along with Sudha Bharadwaj and others, is being held in the Bhima Koregaon case. They are being repeatedly denied bail. Varavara Rao, poet and Maoist intellectual, contracted COVID and has been subject to degrading and humiliating conditions at the age of 80. The overwhelming power that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act gives to the state, the sheer impunity with which government can treat this group of accused, the Kafkaesque role of the judiciary in denying bail and making procedural safeguards ineffective, and the deafening political silence on their detention, all warrant deeper reflection.
Read more
Article 14 / by Abhinav Sekhri
Varavara Rao. Sudha Bharadwaj. Devangana Kalita. SafooraZargar. Scores of activists and students, all labelled criminals, all charged under a law whose legal processes ensure that proof of their innocence or guilt is rendered irrelevant.
Read more
The Times of India / by Sagarika Ghose
… Today, as a result of mass celebration of rough and ready justice by police bullets on the streets, the notion of human rights has been gravely undermined, constricted and even mocked. So called ‘human rights wallahs’ are subject to shrill public vilification, lampooned, called ‘anti-nationals’ and repeatedly denounced by jingoist media.
Read more
UN / By Mary Lawlor United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders
I continue to receive alarming and regular news about Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in India. The 79 year-old jailed Human Rights Defender Varavara Rao appears to have serious health concerns. He’s held in the overcrowded Taloja Prison in Mumbai.
We know that HRDs are at great risk in prisons, which are breeding grounds for the virus. His health is frail, and like all HRDs in jail he should be immeditaley released.
Read full statement
The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha
Delhi University teacher Hany Babu is being made to travel from Delhi to Mumbai despite his apprehensions about travelling during the pandemic.
Mumbai: Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, when passenger travel across states is still regulated, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) wants Delhi University associate professor Hany Babu M.T. to travel from Delhi to the agency’s Mumbai office. The NIA has served him a notice to be present at their South Mumbai office on July 15 as a “witness” in the Elgar Parishad case.
Read more