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Category: Timeline of events

The Bhima Koregaon Arrests and the Resistance in India

The Bhima Koregaon Arrests and the Resistance in India

Monthly Review / by Saroj Giri

It often happens: A murder takes place, an utterly foul one. But there is little outcry, no lasting sense of wrong in public memory. Deep down, everyone is aware of the gross violation that has taken place in their midst. Everyone is affected and silently appalled that there is no redress, no justice. Yet normal life and routine democracy continues—at the expense of a deep scar in the inner recess of society, unseen and perhaps illegible, best described as a void. Like an abyss that stares back, will this void come to haunt everyone later, in some possibly unrecognizable form?
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Bhima Koregaon: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight / Video: Four years after violence

Bhima Koregaon: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight / Video: Four years after violence

Video: 4 Years of Bhima Koregaon Violence – Stories of Loss, Fear, and Grief

01/01/2022

The Quint / by Himanshi Dahiya


hindi (english subtitles) | 10 min | 2022

Ground report: four years on, revisiting families who lost their homes in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence.
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4 Years After Bhima Koregaon, Caste Fault Lines Deepen In Neighbouring Village

01/01/2022

The Quint / by Himanshi Dhiya

An uneasy silence and a sea of policemen characterise Vadhu Budruk, the village at the heart of Bhima Koregaon case.
A police personnel accompanies 60-year-old Panduram Gaikwad everywhere he goes. “He is here for my protection, in case they come to kill me,” says Gaikwad. A Dalit Mahar farmer, he is the owner of the land which was at the heart of the controversy which allegedly led to the the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence in Pune.
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Bhima Koregaon Violence: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight

01/01/2022

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

From the Reliance Infrastructure workers’ arrest to the Naxalite angle, the Bhima Koregaon violence case is mired in multiple theories.
In 2018, months before the Pune police had launched a country-wide raid at the houses and offices of activists, academics and lawyers, the Maharashtra state Anti- Terrorism Squad (ATS) had had rounded up five men – all contractual workers at the Reliance Infrastructure Ltd – for their alleged involvement in the disruption caused at the anti-caste commemoration at Bhima Koregaon near Pune on January 1 that year.
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Bhima Koregaon: Four years after violence, cases registered by rural police await trial

31/12/2021

Hindustan Times / by Shalaka Shinde

In the aftermath of violence in Bhima Koregaon in January 2018, three major chains of investigation have emerged
Four years after the Bhima Koregaon violence that claimed one life and left multiple others injured with large scale damage to property, a chargesheet of at least 1,500 pages has been filed in the case against 41 people including Samasta Hindu Aghadi convener Milind Ekbote but excluding Sambhaji Bhide of Shiv Pratishthan in the case of attempted murder and rioting that was registered against them in January 2018.
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Pune Police books Kalicharan, Ekbote and four others for alleged hate speeches

29/12/2021

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

The Pune Police have filed a first information report against seer Kalicharan Maharaj, Hindutva leader Milind Ekbote and four other persons for allegedly making inflammatory speeches at an event in the city, the officials said on Wednesday according to PTI…
One of the accused persons, Hindutva leader Ekbote, had allegedly made provocative speeches before the caste violence took place in Bhima Koregaon village in 2018. No action has been taken against him so far in this matter.
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Also read:
● “Sambhaji Bhide & Milind Ekbote instigated the Bhima Koregaon Violence,” an accused deposes as witness before Inquiry Commission (LawBeat / Oct 2021)
● Casting a Veil – What we miss by ignoring Maratha caste politics in the Bhima Koregaon case (The Caravan / Dec 2020)
● Police Watered Down Case Against Milind Ekbote, Says Complainant (The Wire / Oct 2018)
● The Curious Case of Milind Ekbote – Prime accused in the attack on Dalits in Bhima Koregaon has a history of inciting violence (CJP / Aug 2018)

How lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj got bail after three years in jail / The Story of Her Incarceration

How lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj got bail after three years in jail / The Story of Her Incarceration

Scroll.in / by Umang Poddar

Still, it will take a week for her to be freed.
On Wednesday, a two-judge bench of the Bombay High Court granted bail to Sudha Bharadwaj, an activist-lawyer who has been jailed since August 2018 in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case.
However, she will have to wait for a week until December 8 to appear before a special judge of the National Investigation Agency Court in Mumbai, who will decide the terms of the bail.
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Video: The Story of Sudha Bharadwaj’s Incarceration

en | 6:41min | 2021

By The Quint

Arrested on 28 August 2018, Bharadwaj has been in pre-trial detention for over three years.
Sudha Bharadwaj, a human rights lawyer, defending India’s indigenous communities, and a protector of worker’s rights, had been serving pre-trial detention since August 2018, until the Bombay High Court accepted her bail plea on 1 December.
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Podcast: The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed? 

Podcast: The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed? 


en | 35min | 2021

The Guardian / by Siddhartha Deb

In 2018, Indian police claimed to have uncovered a shocking plan to bring down the government. But there is mounting evidence that the initial conspiracy was a fiction – and the accused are victims of an elaborate plot.
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The Legal Battle of Bhima Koregaon: The story so far

The Legal Battle of Bhima Koregaon: The story so far

Bar & Bench / by Neha Joshi

The Special NIA Court has listed the pending applications on September 6, 2021
On July 5, 2021, 83-year-old activist and priest Father Stan Swamy passed away in a Mumbai private hospital while in judicial custody for his alleged involvement in the riots that took place in Bhima Koregaon post the Elgar Parishad event held on January 2018.
His death highlighted the state of undertrials in the Bhima Koregaon case, most of whom have been awaiting trial for the past three years.
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Bhima Koregaon accused languishing in jail for 3 years

Bhima Koregaon accused languishing in jail for 3 years

The Hindu / by Sonam Saigal

Plea challenging denial of bail being heard in Bombay HC
Saturday marks three years since trade unionist and human rights advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, columnist and activist Vernon Gonsalves, cartoonist and activist Arun Ferreira and poet and activist Varavara Rao were arrested by the Pune police some seven months after a mob attacked Dalits and Bahujans on January 1, 2018.
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by CIVICUS (Aug 28):
#India: Today marks exactly 3 years since human rights lawyer & activist Sudha Bharadwaj was arrested & subsequently detained under the anti-terror UAPA law on fabricated charges.
The state must #FreeSudhaBharadwaj immediately
http://web.civicus.org/Sudha | #StandAsMyWitness

The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed?

The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed?

The Guardian / by Siddhartha Deb

In 2018, Indian police claimed to have uncovered a shocking plan to bring down the government. But there is mounting evidence that the initial conspiracy was a fiction – and the accused are victims of an elaborate plot
In April 2018, a large group of policemen arrived at the Delhi flat of Rona Wilson, a 47-year-old human rights activist. They had travelled from Pune in the western state of Maharashtra, and appeared, accompanied by Delhi police officials, at Wilson’s single-room flat at 6am. For the next eight hours, they scoured the modest premises, searching the files on Wilson’s laptop and rifling through his books.
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PUDR report: Framed to Die – The Case of Stan Swamy

PUDR report: Framed to Die – The Case of Stan Swamy

By Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)

Marking a month since Stan Swamy passed away in judicial custody in a private hospital, a month in which no official inquiry, even the mandated magisterial inquest, has not been initiated, Framed to die: The case of Stan Swamy documents the manner in which Stan Swamy was framed, fettered, and finally forced towards a fatal illness under due process of law called Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Framed to Die argues that Stan’s experiences of persecution provide an understanding of many others, including the 15 accused in the Bhima Koregaon case. Beyond chronicling Stan’s persecution under law, Framed to Die documents why Comrade Stan was a dissenter and a true patriot and why the state feared and criminalized his dissent under the UAPA.

Download full report (45 pages) here

How 5 Reliance Workers Fighting For A Better Deal Found Themselves In Jail On Terrorism Charges

How 5 Reliance Workers Fighting For A Better Deal Found Themselves In Jail On Terrorism Charges

Article 14 / by Jyoti Punwani

For 15 years, these Mumbai contract workers struggled to be treated on par with regular workers and went from success to success, despite arrests and dismissals. Then the State used a law meant to be used against terrorists to incarcerate them with scant evidence of such crimes.
… So, long before the June 2018 arrests of six Left activists in what has come to be known as the Bhima Koregaon case, the Maharashtra Government’s narrative that the violence on 1 January 2018 was planned by “urban Naxals” was set into motion by the arrests of these workers. 
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Also read:
• Bail After 3 Years for the Incarcerated Mumbai Electric Employees Union Workers (groundxero, June 2021)
• Statement on release of four Reliance workers – First to be falsely implicated in Bhima Koregaon case (Sanhati India, January 2019)

Video: The Bizarre Evidence That Put Stan Swamy & The BK 16 in Prison

Video: The Bizarre Evidence That Put Stan Swamy & The BK 16 in Prison


en | 6:41min | 2021

By The Wire Video

On Monday, 5th July, Fr. Stan Swamy passed away after eight months in prison – conditions that exacerbated his Parkinson’s. He was one of the jailed human-rights advocates also known as the Bhima Koregaon 16.
The evidence that surrounds the case is bizarre. The Wire breaks down the story, looking into the investigation conducted by Arsenal Consulting, a Boston-based digital forensics firm that has claimed the evidence for the arrests of the activists, was planted on their computers.
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