Persecuted – Page 29 – free them all

Mahesh Raut: The Beloved Brother of Adivasis in Gadchiroli

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / By Gauri Lanksh News Desk

Mahesh’s incarceration is a standing testament of the State’s repression of Rights’ activists who protect the values of the Constitution which the same State is trampling upon.
Hailing from Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, Mahesh Raut is a young prominent activist working for the rights of Adivasi communities in his district … He has tirelessly advocated for laws like The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and Forest Rights Act which protect the democratic rights of indigenous communities against unlawful land grabbing by large corporations.
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Surendra Gadling: One who gave Legal Aid Even When In jail

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / by Gauri Lankesh News Desk

Gadling had conducted fact-finding in Chhattisgarh and brought out a report about persecution and harassment of lawyers who take up cases pertaining to tribals trapped in UAPA cases.
Surendra Gadling holds significant knowledge in special laws such as MCOCA, POTA, TADA, UAPA has handled many cases before various forums, including before hon’ble high court for the last 24 years. His professional work, which is his fundamental duty and is part of ensuring the fundamental rights of the accused person has brought him many enemies within the Police Machineries.
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Gautam Navlakha: India’s Inspiration to Demand Civil Liberties in Kashmir

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / by Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty

Gautam was among the very few who had grasped the issues, personally investigated the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir, produced many fact-finding reports which shaped the thinking in the civil liberty movement in India.
Gautam Navlakha launched an Independent Initiative on Kashmir in the 1980s and that was when we had some serious discussion on the Kashmir question at Delhi University. Many of us were so far confused about the way to formulate the J&K issue and most people were unaware of the historical facts. Gautam, then with the Economic and Political Weekly, was among the few who clearly underlined the political question of self-determination that was at the center of the debate.
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What keeps professor Shoma Sen going / A profile of Shoma Sen

10/08/2020 Rani

Solidarity poster by AI

Of 2 min phone calls and three birthdays in prison: What keeps professor Shoma Sen going

10/08/2020

Edex Live / by Parvathi Benu

How much information can two people exchange during a two-minute-long phone call? The call doesn’t extend even a second beyond two minutes. The people at both ends of the call were professor Shoma Sen and her daughter Koel Sen. The call happened on May 7 and this was the only piece of conversation in two months.
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Women’s trajectories towards social equality and liberation – A profile of Shoma Sen

10/08/2020

The Polis Project / by The Polis Project and maraa

The profile features Shoma Sen, an assistant professor and head of the English literature department of Nagpur University, and a Dalit and women’s rights activist. Sen has been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and among other things has been accused of inciting violence in Bhima-Koregaon in 2018.
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Sudha Bharadwaj: The lawyer for poor and labourers

09/08/2020 Maya

Solidarity march in Chhattisgarh, 2019

National Herald / by NHS Bureau

She was a lawyer for the poor, a thorn in the side of big industry. Is that the reason why she has been implicated?
The noted human rights lawyer was born in Massachusetts in the United States but gave up her US citizenship at the age of 18 and returned to India. She studied at IIT-Kanpur and horrified at the condition of labourers in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, she decided to work for them and joined the Chhattisgarh Liberation Front in 1986 when it was still a part of Madhya Pradesh.
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Shoma Sen spends birthday in jail for third consecutive year

02/08/2020 Rani

The Hindu / by Sonam Saigal

Prof. Shoma Sen, former head of department, English, at the Nagpur University, and one of the accused in the Elgaar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon cases, turned 63 on Saturday. She has been lodged in Byculla jail in Mumbai since February this year, when the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Ms. Sen was in Yerwada jail in Pune since her arrest on June 6, 2018, and this was her third birthday in jail.
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Shoma Sen has turned 62 in Byculla Women’s Jail

01/08/2020

By Amnesty India

Today, Professor Shoma Sen has turned 62. She is spending yet another birthday away from her family, detained in Byculla Women’s Jail – where a medical officer & another prisoner have tested positive for #COVID19.

Who Is DU Professor Hany Babu M.T. Arrested Unexpectedly During Witness Summon?

01/08/2020 Rani

Edimes.in / by Aditi Gupta

Co-operate and get arrested!
Hany Babu M.T., Associate Professor of English at the University of Delhi, Major in Language Ideology, Politics and Policy, Linguistic Identity, Marginalised Languages and Social Justice, was arrested by NIA (National Investigation Agency) on, Tuesday, July 28, for connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case. A total of 12 people – all activists, lawyers, and academics – have been arrested in the case.
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Who Is Anand Teltumbde?

29/07/2020 Rani

The Struggle Against Dalit Oppression in India

31/07/2020

Jacobin / by Kunal Chattopadhyay

The Indian state has imprisoned the Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde on trumped-up charges of terrorism and subversion. His activism and writing on caste and class are needed more than ever in the struggle against both casteism and capitalism.
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Who’s Afraid of Anand Teltumbde?

24/01/2020

The Wire / by N. Balmurli

Teltumbde’s writing has exposed the hypocrisy of the votaries of neo-liberal capitalism, caste deniers and Hindutva triumphalists. It is they who seek to silence him today.
… A consummate polymath, Anand Teltumbde is at once comfortable with hard-nosed political-economic analyses of globalisation, as with the cultural-politics of caste identities and caste-class dialectics, or with the techno-business strategic policy formulations that figure in trade journals.
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When the State Fears a Poet: Varsha speaks up for her uncle

15/07/2020 Rani

Boston Review / by Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla

On Saturday, I checked my phone and saw that we’d heard from my uncle, currently a political prisoner in India. “I’m alright,” he said. But he wasn’t alright. His voice was weak and feeble, and his words, disjointed, slipped into Hindi instead of his beloved Telugu. For over six decades, Varavara Rao, the revolutionary poet, captivated generations with his critical poetry and prose. That he was anything less than articulate, let alone incoherent, was a gut punch. The goal of Narendra Modi’s administration has been to silence those like my uncle. Had they succeeded?
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Chained Muse: Notes from Prison by Varavara Rao/ How To Read A Letter From Jail

13/07/2020 Rani

The Wire / by Varavara Rao

In November 2019, when the Bhima Koregaon accused were still housed in Yerawada Central Prison and their case had not yet been transferred to the NIA, the Telugu poet penned some thoughts about his experience there, and the carceral nature of the state.
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HOW TO READ A LETTER FROM JAIL

ARUN FERREIRA’S PRISON MEMOIR, 2014

08/06/2020

Bloomberg Quint / by Priya Ramani

“Read it not once, but many times,” says Mohammad Aamir Khan explaining the process clearly over the phone. “Each word has a story. Try to feel the pain behind each word.”
Khan, 39, should know. After he was “kidnapped” one night (he never uses the word arrested because he was snatched from the street, tortured, made to sign blank sheets of paper, and then produced in a court only a week later), Khan spent 14 years in prison, incarcerated for serious crimes he never committed, before being acquitted in 2012.
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