Browsed by
Category: Repression

Loneliness of VV Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj tells about state and us

Loneliness of VV Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj tells about state and us

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

Solidarity in Berlin, Palermo, Milan (July 2020)
How The UAPA Is Perverting The Idea Of Justice

How The UAPA Is Perverting The Idea Of Justice

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 ‘Encounter Raj’ mindset: Stop mocking those who stand for human rights

The ‘Encounter Raj’ mindset: Stop mocking those who stand for human rights

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

Alarming Reports of Attacks on Human Rights Defenders in India: UN

Alarming Reports of Attacks on Human Rights Defenders in India: UN

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

NIA Issues Summons to an Academic, a Journalist and 3 Activists

NIA Issues Summons to an Academic, a Journalist and 3 Activists


Drawing by Arun Ferreira

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

Bhima Koregaon case: NIA summons Delhi University professor Hany Babu to Mumbai

Bhima Koregaon case: NIA summons Delhi University professor Hany Babu to Mumbai


Solidarity with Hany Babu, Delhi 2019

Scroll.in / by Sruthisagar Yamunan

The National Investigation Agency inquiring into the Bhima Koregaon case in Maharashtra has summoned Delhi University associate professor MT Hany Babu to appear before it in Mumbai on July 15. The summons were delivered to him by an officer on Saturday. Babu described the agency’s move as “harassment”.
Read more

By failing to check NIA in Gautam Navlakha case, SC has undermined the Delhi HC

By failing to check NIA in Gautam Navlakha case, SC has undermined the Delhi HC

Scroll.in / by Sruthisagar Yamunan

The National Investigation Agency’s actions were designed to undermine the jurisdiction of the Delhi court.
For India’s higher judiciary, two elements of court proceedings have come to be regarded as sacrosanct. As courts of record, the High Courts and the Supreme Court pay close attention to precedent: rules established in previous legal cases play a strong role when a later case with similar circumstances is decided.
Read more

With no new evidence, NIA relies on Pune police case to oppose bail to Bhima-Koregaon accused

With no new evidence, NIA relies on Pune police case to oppose bail to Bhima-Koregaon accused

The Print / by Bhardra Sinha

NIA affidavits opposing the bail petitions of rights activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao and Shoma Sen had content similar to Pune Police’s findings in 2018 & 2019.
New Delhi: Six months after the National Investigative Agency (NIA) took over the probe in the Bhima-Koregaon violence, it does not seem to have made much headway in its investigation
Read more

Another Birthday In Jail For Youngest Bhima-Koregaon Accused

Another Birthday In Jail For Youngest Bhima-Koregaon Accused

Article 14 / by Chitrangada Choudhury

Adivasi rights defender, a former fellow of a prestigious prime ministerial programme, and son of a police official, Mahesh Raut is the youngest of the ‘Bhima-Koregaon 11’, accused of spreading Maoist ideology and encouraging ‘unlawful activities’. He’s been in jail without trial for two years.
Read more