Persecution – Page 42 – free them all

Securing the right to health of political prisoners

19/10/2022 Asha

The Leaflet / by Rohin Bhatt

It is time that the right to health becomes a reality, in letter and spirit to every person, irrespective of their incarceration status. This will have to be done through a wide scale, public health campaign, and rapid recruitment of qualified doctors with training in evidence-based medicine that can provide adequate care to prisoners.
It has been good law in India since Bandhua Mukti Morcha versus Union of India (1983) that the right to health is a fundamental part of right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution…
However, what happens when you are a political prisoner in India? These rights are vitiated, and the process becomes the punishment.
Read more

Also read/watch:
● Relatives of BK16 Flag Prison Authorities’ ‘Criminal Negligence’ and Deteriorating Health of Undertrials (Newsclick / Sep 2022)
● Stop Denying Political Prisoners the Right to Healthcare in Jails (Peoples Union for Democratic Rights / Sep 2022)
● Hunger Strike unto death against the harassment from Taloja Central Jail’s apathetic administration (By Sagar Gorkhe / May 20, 2022)

● Video: The Conditions of Prisoners in Indian Jails

By All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice – AILAJ / March 2022

en | 1:21:23 | 2022
The huge number of undertrials, the overcrowding, and the disproportional numbers of Dalit, Muslim and Adivasi prisoners are part of the prison problem in India.
We are joined by Adv. Sudha Bharadwaj for a discussion on the Conditions of Prisoners in Indian Jails.
Watch video

Kabir Kala Manch incited hatred, passion at Elgar Parishad: Bombay High Court [read order]

18/10/2022 Asha

Kabir Kala Manch Incited Hatred By Ridiculing Phrases Acche Din, Demonetization In Plays: Bombay HC [read order]

18/10/2022

Live Law / by Sharmeen Hakim

Text ridiculing phrases like ‘Ram Mandir’ and ‘Acche Din’ aimed at the democratically elected government in Kabir Kala Manch’s plays at the Elgar Parishad event in 2017 incited hatred & passion and indicate a larger conspiracy, the Bombay High Court has held.
In its detailed order refusing bail to accused Jyoti Jagtap under UAPA, the HC also took exception to the mention of ‘gomutra,’ ‘calling the PM an ‘infant,’ ‘sanatan dharma,’ ‘atrocities of peshwas towards dalits’ and ‘atrocities of dalits in today’s India’ etc.
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Kabir Kala Manch incited hatred, passion at Elgar Parishad: Bombay High Court

17/10/2022

India Today / by Vidya

Jyoti Jagtap was an active member of the KKM which, during its stage play at the Elgar Parishad conclave on December 31, 2017, gave not only “aggressive but highly provocative slogans”, the court said.
The Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) admittedly performed and incited hatred by performing on an agenda in the Elgar Parishad event, the judgment passed by the division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and MN Jadhav of the Bombay High Court observed while rejecting the bail plea of one of the accused, Jyoti Jagtap.
Read more

Also read:
● Kabir Kala Manch: A History of Revolutionary Singing and State Repression (ritimo / April 2022)

Bombay High Court rejects bail petition of Kabir Kala Manch activist Jyoti Jagtap

17/10/2022 Asha

Bombay HC rejects activist Jyoti Jagtap’s bail petition

17/10/2022

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

A bench comprising Justices Ajay Gadkari and Milind Jadhav observed that the case filed against her by the National Investigation Agency was prima facie true.
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday rejected a bail application filed by activist Jyoti Jagtap, one of the accused persons in the Bhima Koregaon case, Bar and Bench reported.
Jagtap, who is a member of cultural organisation Kabir Kala Manch, has been in prison since September 2020. On Monday, a bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Milind Jadhav rejecting her bail plea, observing that the case filed against her by the National Investigation Agency was prima facie true.
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Bombay High Court rejects bail plea of Jyoti Jagtap

17/10/2022

Bar & Bench / by Neha Joshi

A bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav observed that the NIA case was prima facie true and considering the material against Jagtap, the appeal challenging rejection of bail by Special Court stood dismissed.
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday rejected the regular bail application filed by Jyoti Jagtap, one of the youngest accused in the Bhima Koregaon case of 2018.
Jagtap, allegedly part of the banned performance group by the name Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), had approached the High Court in appeal after a Special Court under the National Investigation Act (NIA) had rejected her bail application on February 14 this year
The high court bench of Justice AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav, hwoever, rejected the appeal today.
Read more

Bombay High Court Denies Bail to Jyoti Jagtap

17/10/2022

Live Law / by Sharmeen Hakim

The Bombay High Court on Monday denied bail to Jyoti Jagtap, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad Case under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Jagtap, 32, is allegedly a member of Kabir Kala Manch — a cultural group branded as a front organisation of the banned CPI (Maoist). She was arrested by the NIA in September, 2020.
According to NIA, Jagtap and others organised the Elgar Parishad on December 31, 2017 that led to violence the following day.
Read more

Also watch:
● Video: Dafachya Talavar (Songs of Defiance) – A short documentary on Kabir Kala Manch | Hindi, Marthi (subtitles: English) | 24:01min | 2022

Video: Sudha Bharadwaj on activism, her time in jail & why Chhattisgarh will always be home

15/10/2022 Asha

en | 13:32min | 2022

Newslaundry / by Manisha Pande; NL Interview

The trade unionist and lawyer sits down with Manisha Pande in Mumbai.
Sudha Bharadwaj loves mathematics, wonders whether she gave her daughter the “right” kind of childhood, and became a lawyer when she was 40 years old.
“Had I not become a lawyer,” she says, “I don’t think I would have been very easily accepted as a leader.”
Sudha was released from Mumbai’s Byculla Jail in December last year after spending three years in prison. She was arrested in connection with the #BhimaKoregaon violence and was repeatedly denied bail until December 1. She was also dubber an ‘urban naxal’ by TV channels that made little attempt to understand her work. Sudha says she now wants to go to her real home, to Chhattisgarh, where she’s lived since the 1980s.
In this interview, she talks about her childhood in Bilaspur and her educational journey, culminating in IIT Kanpur. Her mother, a #JNU professor, helped shape the ideology of this self-proclaimed #Marxist – though she confesses her mother had many “apprehensions” – who began working with trade unions at the age of 25.
Working with people on the ground, Sudha is only too aware of how “alien” the judicial process is to the majority of India’s population. “The notification comes out in the gazette. You are somewhere, miles away in a village which is not even accessible, and nobody even tells you about it,” she says. She also thinks it’s important for young lawyers to cut their teeth by representing the most marginalised.
In Byculla jail, where she remembers she once saw #RheaChakraborty, Sudha continued her work, trying to secure legal aid for those imprisoned with her. She believes in the importance of a “united front” – the farm law protests are an example, with people holding differing ideologies coming together – and worries that the lack of this unity gives rise to dogma.
Watch 13 min video clip here

by newslaundry (Oct 21, 2022):
‘He was never an opportunist in his politics.’ @Sudhabharadwaj talks about labour law leader and founder of the #Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha Shankar Guha Niyogi and the actual movement that led to his assassination.
Watch video clip (3:46min)

by newslaundry (Oct 20, 2022):
In conversation with @MnshaP @Sudhabharadwaj details the #Sarkeguda encounter case in #Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district in which unarmed villagers including minors were killed, and the legal battle that ensued.
Watch video clip (4:30min)

by newslaundry (Oct 19, 2022):
‘So much money goes to defend the state.’ Speaking with @MnshaP, @Sudhabharadwaj
talks about legal aid in India and how there is no level playing field for citizens.
Watch video clip (2:34min)

Watch the full interview (for subscribers only) here

How the term Urban Naxal came to being

11/10/2022 Asha

Girish Karnad, Sep 2018 #MeTooUrbanNaxal

The rise of ‘Urban Naxals’, a term ‘not used by Govt’

13/10/2022

The Indian Express / by Vidhatri Rao

BJP has used it for AAP, Modi has attacked Cong over the same, and now it figures in PM’s Gujarat speeches.
Speaking after laying the foundation stone of the country’s first bulk drug park in Gujarat’s Bharuch district Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up the issue of “Urban Naxals”…
The BJP has been using the term regularly since it first became popular after high-profile arrests of activists in July and August of 2018 in the Elgar Parishad case. Probing alleged links of the arrested activists to the violence at Bhima Koregaon in Pune that followed the Elgar Parishad event, police called them Urban Naxals.
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How the term Urban Naxal came to being

11/10/2022

Deccan Herald / by DH Web Desk

The term ‘Urban Naxal’ is based off a Maoist strategy
PM Narendra Modi on Monday cautioned the people of Gujarat against ‘Urban Naxals’ trying to enter the state in a veiled attack on the Aam Aadmi Party, blaming ‘Urban Naxals’ of obstructing development projects in his home state. The term was coined by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri’s May 2017 essay in right-wing magazine Swarajya, who went on to direct films like The Tashkent Files and The Kashmir Files. It came to be used in political circles in the wake of the Elgar-Parishad case, where left-wing dissenters who were critical of the Modi government were arrested in connection with violence in Maharashtra’s Bhima-Koregaon in 2018.
Read more

Also read:
● Constitutional Conduct Group: Open Letter to Citizens of India (Constitutionalconduct.com / Nov 2021)
● Amit Shah asks CRPF to take ‘effective action’ against urban Naxals, facilitators (Hindustan Times / Nov 2019)
● From Anti-National to Urban Naxal: The Trajectory of Dissent in India – How the term Urban Naxal came to being (Newsclick / Sep 2018)

After 5 benches recuse, Rona Wilson seeks suitable HC bench

30/09/2022 Asha

After 5 benches recuse, Elgaar case accused seeks suitable HC bench

30/09/2022

The Indian Express / by Sadaf Modak

Wilson had, in February 2021, moved a petition before the high court citing the report of a US-based digital consultant which said that his computer was ‘infected with malware’ planted two years before his arrest in 2018. The last effective hearing before the high court on Wilson’s petition was on August 4, 2021.
Activist Rona Wilson, an accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, on Thursday told a special court that he has written to the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court seeking a suitable bench to hear and dispose of a petition filed by him in a time-bound manner, as five benches have, so far, recused themselves from hearings on the case.
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Rona Wilson writes to high court CJ for early hearing of discharge plea

30/09/2022

Hindustan Times / by Charul Shah

Rona Wilson, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon violence case, has requested the Chief Justice of Bombay high court to expedite the hearing of his discharge plea based on the report by an American digital consultancy firm.
He had approached the high court in February last year to quash the case against him and to issue directions for setting up a special investigation team headed by a retired supreme court or high court judge to conduct a forensic analysis of the electronic evidence the police claimed to have collected against the accused.
Read more

Also read:
● Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired.com / June 2022)
● In Bhima-Koregaon Case, More Damning Signs of Planted Evidence (article14 / March 2021)

Supreme Court Directs To Take Gautam Navlakha To Hospital Immediately

29/09/2022 Asha

Supreme Court declines Gautam Navlakha’s plea for house arrest, directs immediate medical treatment

29/09/2022

The Leaflet / by Sarah Thanawala

On Thursday, in Gautam Navlakha versus National Investigation Agency and Anr., a division bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justices K.M. Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy, denied petitioner Gautam Navlakha’s plea to transfer him from Taloja Central Jail, where he is currently lodged, and place him in house arrest for two weeks to enable him to undergo colonoscopy. The court, however, passed an urgent order directing Navlakha to be immediately taken for a thorough medical treatment.
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Gautam Navlakha to be shifted to hospital, Supreme Court orders jail authorities

29/09/2022

Live Law / by Rintu Mariam Biju

While considering the petition filed by Bhima Koregaon case accused Gautam Navlakha seeking transfer to house arrest, the Supreme Court on Thursday directed that he be taken to a hospital of his choice immediately for a thorough medical check-up.
The Court will consider his plea next on October 21. The hospital has been asked to submit a report to the Court based on the check-up.
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Gautam Navlakha to be shifted to hospital, Supreme Court orders jail authorities

29/09/2022

Scroll.in. / by Scroll Staff

The court initially read an order allowing the activist to be put under house arrest, but revised it after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed the judgement.
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Taloja jail authorities to admit activist Gautam Navlakha to a hospital for medical check up and treatment, reported Live Law. The court said he will remain under police custody during his treatment.
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Day to day hearing of discharge applications in Bhima Koregaon – Elgar Parishad case begins

27/09/2022 Asha

Day to day hearing of discharge applications in Elgar Parishad case begins

28/09/2022

India Today / by Vidya

A special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai began a day-to-day hearing of four discharge applications filed by the Elgar Parishad.
Highlights
▪ Mumbai’s special National Investigation Agency court began a day-to-day hearing in Elgar Parishad case
▪ The court to hear four discharge applications filed by the accused
▪ Three more discharge applications were filed on Tuesday
… Procedurally, courts hear the discharge applications, and if it finds no material against the accused in the charge sheet filed by the investigators, it discharges the accused.
However, if the court finds substantial evidence, the discharge plea gets rejected, and a full-fledged trial ensues.
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Bhima Koregaon case trial process begins over four years after case was registered

28/09/2022

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

An NIA court started hearing a discharge plea filed by Sudhir Dhawale, one of the accused persons.
A Mumbai court on Tuesday started hearing the first of the seven discharge applications filed by accused persons in the Bhima Koregaon case, Bar and Bench reported. The hearing marks the beginning of the trial process in the case four years after it was filed in 2018.
The development came after the Supreme Court, on August 19, ordered a National Investigation Agency court to decide on framing charges against the accused persons within three months.
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Mumbai Court begins hearing discharge applications of accused

28/09/2022

Bar & Bench / by Neha Joshi

The Court also rejected an application filed by octogenarian P Varavara Rao seeking permission to live in Hyderabad for 3 months in order to conduct cataract surgery.
A Mumbai court on Tuesday began hearing the first of the seven discharge applications filed by the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case of 2018.
The hearing on discharge is the first step towards framing of charges, thus, kick-starting the trial in the case which has been pending in the pre-trial stage since 2018.
This development comes in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court in August asking the special court to decide on framing of charges within 3 months.
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Three more accused, including activist Navlakha, seek discharge in Elgar case

27/09/2022

The New Indian Express / by pti

While Navlakha and Babu are currently in jail under judicial custody, Bharadwaj is out on bail.
Activists Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj and Delhi University professor Hany Babu, all accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, on Tuesday moved discharge applications before the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court here …
Meanwhile, the court on Tuesday heard the arguments on the discharge plea of another accused, Sudhir Dhawale. The arguments will continue on Wednesday …
The discharge pleas of some other accused – Jyoti Jagtap, Anand Teltumbde and Mahesh Raut – were also pending before the court.
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SC Seeks Responses On Gautam Navalkha’s Plea For House Arrest / Setalvad’s Personal Plea

27/09/2022 Asha

Live Law / by Rintu Mariam Biju

The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday sought the responses of the National Investigation Agency and State of Maharashtra in a petition moved by Gautam Navalkha seeking to be placed in house arrest instead of Taloja jail in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case.
A bench comprising Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy, while considering the matter, asked the counsel appearing for the petitioner to brief them on the present plea.
… The matter will be next taken up on September 29
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A Home Behind Bars: Teesta Setalvad’s Personal Plea for ‘House Arrest’ for Political Prisoners

28/09/2022

The Wire / by Teesta Setalvad

The activist-writer, herself incarcerated for 63 days this June-September, makes a strong plea for the recognition of political prisoners and the option of house arrest – if at all, they deserve incarceration.
The prison, it is famously said, holds a mirror to society. The conditions within prisons, to stretch this analogy further, reflect the quality of any democracy. By that yardstick, India needs a hard and harsh soul-search. Not only has our collapsing criminal justice system ensured a mockery of reasonably speedy trials but tardy and often skewed (if not biased) investigations and prosecutions have ensured that undertrials languish unforgotten in our jails, for decades.
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Special NIA court rejects Varavara Rao’s plea to go home, says it has to frame charges in case

26/09/2022 Asha

Allowing Varavara Rao to travel will delay framing of charges, says NIA court

27/09/2022

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

The 83-year-old activist had told the judge that he has cataracts in both eyes and the condition requires surgery.
Framing of charges in the Elgar Parishad case will get delayed if Varavara Rao is allowed to travel to Hyderabad for cataract surgery, a National Investigation Agency court has said while denying permission to the activist, Live Law reported.
Rao was denied permission to travel by the court on Friday. A detailed order was made available on Monday.
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Can’t Allow Varavara Rao To Stay In Hyderabad For Three Months For Cataract Treatment, Will Delay Framing of Charges: NIA Court

26/09/2022

Live Law / by Live Law News Network

Observing that framing of charges in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad caste violence case will get delayed, the Special Court last week rejected poet-accused Varavara Rao’s application to undergo cataract treatment in Hyderabad.
Special Judge Rajesh Katariya cited the recent SC judgement granting Rao bail in which it was said that a decision on framing of charges must be taken within three months.
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Special NIA court rejects Varavara Rao’s plea to go home, says it has to frame charges in Elgar Parishad case

26/09/2022

India Toda / by Vidya

The NIA opposed the application, saying the treatment sought by Rao was available in Mumbai and that he was only seeking to nullify the SC’s terms for granting him medical bail.
A special NIA court in Mumbai has rejected the request of Telugu poet and Elgar Parishad accused Varavara Rao to go to Hyderabad for three months to undergo cataract surgery. The court said it had to frame charges against the accused within the next three months and so rejected the request.
Read more

Also read:
● Supreme Court directs trial court to expeditiously frame charges and decide discharge pleas (The Leaflet / Aug 2022)