Modi promised a strike on Pakistan. Instead, he turned the tools of the British empire inward—counting caste to divide, not to dismantle it.
After the Pahalgam terrorist attack of April 22, 2025, the mitti me mila denge threat from Narendra Modi seemed to imply that he would launch a big-bang, post-Pulwama-style surgical strike on Pakistan. But what came on April 30, 2025, after a week of quiet, was the declaration of a caste census. Read more
The BK-16 case links India’s harmful neoliberal policies, state authorities abuse of laws, and the collapse of institutions, says the social anthropologist
… In this episode of State of Southasia, Shah speaks to Nayantara Narayanan about the work of the BK16 with indigenous communities and other minorities, their pushback against neoliberal policies and why they were seen as threats by the Indian state, and how and why they were implicated in the Bhima Koregaon case. The case shows a “very direct link between the kinds of interests of the state and corporate powers in accessing resources that lie under [Adivasi] lands and the fight for justice of those people who those lands belong to,” she says.
▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India
Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672 Read more / order
Lawyers demand protection from harassment, sexism, and state repression as AILAJ finalizes draft Advocates’ Protection Bill after month-long campaign.
All India Lawyers Association of Justice (AILAJ) Delhi culminated its month-long campaign for the enactment of an Advocates’ Protection Act in a state-level consultation held on 12 April at the Press Club of India. …
Advocate Rohin Bhatt … urged that the Bill must have provisions that discourage the state from maliciously prosecuting lawyers, as it has done to lawyers like Sudha Bhardwaj and Surendra Gadling in the Bhima Koregaon case. Read more
▪ 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
A caged bird can still sing – clearing Fr Stan’s name
The Indian Jesuit and human rights defender Fr Stan Swamy, who was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, died in custody, aged 84, in 2021. He would have been 88 on 26 April this year. Jesuits around the world are calling on the Government of India to declare him innocent of the crimes of which he was accused.
Fr Stan Swamy died as an “undertrial” at Holy Family Hospital, Mumbai on July 5, 2021. In 2023, I met Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Anand Teltumbde in Mumbai after they were released on bail. All three were implicated in the Bhima Koregaon case, popularly known as the BK16 or Elgar Parishad case, as there were 16 accused.
Arun Ferreira lived with Stan in the same prison cell and took care of Stan like a mother. Vernon and Anand became good friends discussing various socio-political issues. Read more
Learning About Strength, Solidarity and the Injustices of Incarceration
04/04/2025
The Wire / by Meenaz Kakalia
In ‘The Feared’, Neeta Kolhatkar interviews 11 political prisoners and their loved ones about their struggles, their resilience and their joys.
While memoirs of political prisoners are not uncommon, what one doesn’t often find is their stories told through interviews which probe the more intimate aspects of their lives and the enduring ways in which their incarceration has affected their families and loved ones. Read more
Voices from the Purgatory
04/04/2025
The Telegraph / by Kartik Chauhan
The Feared is not only an urgent call for prison reforms but it also reveals an alarming history of forced and/or false incarcerations of political dissenters, opponents and activists in India
… The opening interview with Sudha Bharadwaj revisits her days in Yerawada and Byculla prisons. Bharadwaj talks about her daughter and the complexity of mulaqat processes in Indian prisons — a recurring conversation in the book wherein the interviewees report arbitrary rules that the prison authorities impose with impunity, often in flagrant violation of the prescribed Prison Manual. Read more
Also read: ▪ The Feared – Conversations with Eleven Political Prisoners
Author: Neeta Kolhatkar
Publishing Date: Dec 2024
Publisher: S&S India
Pages: 272
During long discussions, sometimes taking place over multiple meetings, Kolhatkar unearths personal anecdotes from the time her interviewees were incarcerated, bringing into focus the human face of prison inmates, while also detailing the wretched conditions relating to space, hygiene, medical attention, and food that they experienced. Read more /order
A Bhima Koregaon political prisoner reflects on his release.
The author and activist Sudhir Dhawale was released on 24 January, after six years and seven months in jail. Dhawale, who founded the anti-caste group Republican Panthers Jatiantachi Chalwal and publishes the Marathi magazine Vidrohi, was one of the organisers of the Elgar Parishad, on 31 December 2017, a day before caste violence broke out on the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. …
Shahid Tantray, a multimedia reporter at The Caravan, spoke to Dhawale at his organisation’s Mumbai office. Read more
Click to enlarge | Credits: Mouli Sharma / The Polis Project
The Polis Project / by Mouli Sharma and Prashant Rahi
This is the third report in a three-part investigative series on the Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon case. Read part one here and part two here.
In October 2014, five months after the arrest of the professor GN Saibaba, Stan Swamy’s computer was hacked. Unbeknown to the world, the nascent stages of investigation against the prime accused in the Elgar Parishad case, who came to be monikered the BK-16, had already begun in 2014 – four years before any of the arrests even took place.
The unknown attacker used a Remote Access Trojan – or RAT – sent through targeted phishing emails to compromise Swamy’s computer. Read more
Dispatches: A Conversation on unravelling the Elgar Parishad / Bhima Koregaon case
Conjuring the BK16 Myth: How the Elgar Parishad case rests on fiction and deception
21/03/2025
The Polis Project / by Prashant Rahi and Mouli Sharma
This is the second report in a three-part investigative series on the Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon case. Read part one here.
Three months after a Hindutva mob attacked a peaceful gathering of Dalit-Bahujan men, women, and children, a cabal from the Pune Urban Police mounted a bizarre prosecution, holding 16 eminent human rights defenders (HRDs) responsible for the Elgar Parishad, an anti-caste event held in the city, a day before. The infamous case has, however, come to draw its name less from the event, and more from the calamitous gathering that assembled on both sides of the river Bhima, on 1st January 2018, to pay homage to an obelisk-shaped martyrs’ column, at Perne Phata, opposite the village of Koregaon. In the months that followed, the HRDs were imprisoned in waves of arrests across the country, with no evidence so far linking them to the mob violence. Read more
Swamy, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had filed bail pleas citing medical grounds which were rejected multiple times. While incarcerated, his health deteriorated and he died on July 5, 2021.
A day after TMC MP Saket Gokhale alleged that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) “denied even a straw” to Father Stan Swamy while he was in jail, former NIA Director General Y C Modi in a statement on Thursday dismissed the allegation and said that the central agency had no role in denying Stan Swamy a sipper. Read more
The Erosion Of Judicial Independence: Is India’s Judiciary An Extension Of Hindutva?
11/03/2025
Eurasiareview / by Debashis Chakrabarti
Once the last bastion against executive overreach, India’s judiciary today stands accused of capitulating to the ideological project of Hindutva—an ethno-nationalist vision that seeks to establish India as a Hindu-first nation.
… While BJP-affiliated individuals find themselves exonerated, critics of the regime face relentless judicial harassment. Activists, journalists, and intellectuals have been imprisoned under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and sedition charges, with little to no judicial relief. The arrests of intellectuals like Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Umar Khalid reflect how the judiciary has become a willing accomplice in the state’s crackdown on dissent. Read more
Eternal adjournments, impractical riders mar precious Constitutional values
10/03/2025
DT Next / by Justice K Chandru Retd
The case of Umar Khalid, a JNU student who was arrested in connection with the March 2020 Delhi riots, is more disconcerting. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the police filing a conspiracy case, but it is not even close to being tried.
… A classic example is the case of Bhima Koregaon (BK-16) – which became BK-15 after Fr Stan Swamy’s death. Though more than seven years have passed since the arrest of the accused, many are yet to get bail from the special court or the High Court. Read more
