en | 12:51 min | 2014
youtoube / produced by Faiza Khan
Arun Ferreira was arrested in May 2007 on fabricated charges under the Unlawful Activities and Prevention Act (UAPA). As soon as he was acquitted in a case, a new one would be conjured up. Finally out on bail in January 2012, Arun talks about life in prison and torture they were subjected to, through his sketches.
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First published: May 27, 2014
Round Table India / Interview with Sudhir Dhawale by Round Table India
Round Table India spoke to writer and political activist Sudhir Dhawale in Mumbai last week, after his release from a long term spent in prison due to false charges of being involved in Naxal activities. Arrested in January 2011, he was acquitted last week by Gondia’s sessions court after the police failed to produce substantial evidence against him.
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The Caravan Magazine / By Arshu John
On 6 June, in a joint operation across Delhi, Nagpur and Mumbai, the Pune Police arrested five individuals for allegedly being “top urban Maoist operatives” who incited the violence in Bhima Koregaon—a town in Maharashtra—this January. Sudhir Dhawale, one of the five accused, is a prominent Mumbai-based activist who has worked extensively on Dalit rights. He has previously been arrested, and subsequently acquitted, in another case of alleged involvement with Maoist rebels.
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KAFILA / By Vidhya A
In a statement issued on April 16 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) claimed that the ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ to combat Left Wing Extremism (LWE) is ‘a multi-pronged strategy involving security and development related measures’[1]. This new policy, apparently in place since the NDA government came to power at the centre, claims to have ‘zero tolerance towards violence coupled with a big push to developmental activities so that benefits of development reached the poor and vulnerable in the affected areas’.
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First published: Jun 3, 2014
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)/ By Sumit Galhotra
After languishing in jail for 40 months, Mumbai-based journalist and activist Sudhir Dhawale has walked free. Dhawale was the only journalist in jail in India in late 2013, according to CPJ’s annual prison census. With his release, there are currently no other journalists behind bars in the country for work-related reasons.
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Catchnews / By Rajeev Khanna
The arrest of Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson and Mahesh Raut in the Bhima-Koregaon case by Maharashtra Police under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, has stunned the civil society. They have been termed as ‘urban’ or just plain Naxalites for the ever gullible self-styled nationalists and their arrest would form a part of the political debates where nationalism is the flavour.
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First published: Jan 11, 2016
Sanhati / By Anjani Kumar
Already in 2011, Sudhir Dhawale was arrested under several sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and then spent nearly four years in jail. He was acquitted of all the charges filed against him in court. Over the four years that he spent in jail, he was denied nearly every basic human right. On the 23rd of May 2015, he spoke at the ‘Convention against Silencing Democracy & Criminalizing Dissent’ organized by the Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr. GN Saibaba in Delhi. Anjani Kumar spoke to him on the 24th of May on various issues.
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Scroll.in / By Anand Teltumbde
In ‘Republic of Caste’, published this year, Anand Teltumbde writes about how Maoist and Naxalite labels make Dalits and Adivasis even more vulnerable.
Despite its mode of expression, the much-maligned Naxalite movement is essentially an act of dissent, a public protest, a fact occasionally acknowledged by the government itself, although the actions of the latter never reflect this admission.
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Statement by Amnesty International India
Responding to the arrests of five activists from Maharashtra on suspicion of having links with banned Maoist groups, Aakar Patel, Executive Director, Amnesty International India, said:
Sanhati / By CDRO, IAPL, WSS
In the morning of 22nd April 2018, an alleged encounter took place in Boriya-Kasnasur of Bhamragarh tehsil of Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra. A fact finding team comprising of 44 persons from across 12 states belonging to three major human rights networks and organisations – Co-ordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO), Indian Association People’s Lawyers (IAPL) and Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) visited the sites of the alleged encounters in the district of Gadchiroli. Their findings show that while the term encounter is being used for all of these instances, they are in fact fake.
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