Solidarity – free them all

Podcast: Alpa Shah on the Bima Koregaon case and India’s democratic decline

28/04/2025 Asha

Himal Southasian / by The Editors

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.

en | 47:09 min | 2025
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▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India
Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
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Protecting the Protectors: AILAJ Demands Advocates Protection Act

15/04/2025 Asha

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

The Mooknayak / by Mooknayak English

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.
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Also read/watch:
▪ How These Lawyers Worked Tirelessly To Free Saibaba (Rediff.com / March 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)
▪ Lawyers Withstood Pressures and Defended Activists in the Bhima Koregaon Case (The Leaflet / Jan 2021)

▪ 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.
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A caged bird can still sing – clearing Fr Stan’s name

14/04/2025 Asha

The Tablet / by Joseph Xavier SJ

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.
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Also read/watch:
▪ Caged birds and prison songs: In chorus, Stan Swamy and the Bhima Koregaon accused kept hope alive (Scroll.in | by Vernon Gonsalves | Jul 2023)
▪ How the system broke Stan Swamy: A cell mate recalls the activist’s last days in prison (Scroll.in | by Arun Ferreira | Aug 2021)

▪ Video: Testimony of Stan Swamy, two days before his arrest on 8 October 2020.

en | 7:48 min | Oct 6, 2020
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Learning About Strength, Solidarity and the Injustices of Incarceration / Voices from the Purgatory

04/04/2025 Asha

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.
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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.
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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

▪ ‘The Message Is Loud & Clear.’ Author Of New Book On 11 Indian ‘Prisoners Of Conscience’ & The Costs Of Defiance (Article 14 / March 2025)
▪ THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES (THE POLIS PROJECT / 2024)
▪ Process as Punishment – Recent books that bear witness to the BK-16’s incarceration (The Caravan / Jul 2024)

Sudhir Dhawale: “This is a bigger prison”

01/04/2025 Asha

The Caravan / by Shahid Tantray

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

Also read:
▪ BK-16 Prison Diaries: Sudhir Dhawale’s poem, “Prisoners of Consciousness” (The Polis Project / March 2025)
▪ Sudhir Dhawale interview: ‘The law remains blind to injustice even with the blindfold gone’ (Scroll.in / Feb 2025)
▪ Interview | Sudhir Dhawale’s Work Will Go on (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ Sudhir Dhawale: ‘Never Imagined Meeting Hardened Criminals’ (Rediff.com / Jan 2025)
▪ Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order] (Sabrangindia / Jan 2025)
▪ Arun Ferreira: The government is muzzling people’s movement in the country (Midday / June 2018)

How an unsophisticated malware attack became India’s biggest state-sponsored cybercrime / Online Conversation

26/03/2025 Asha

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.
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Dispatches: A Conversation on unravelling the Elgar Parishad / Bhima Koregaon case

With Prashant Rahi, Mouli Sharma and Arshu John
By The Polis Project / @project_polis
en | 49min | 2025
Listen to the recording on X Spaces Live

Also read:
▪ Incriminating evidence planted in computers: The Trojan solved the Bhima Koregaon case! (Anchored Narratives / Jan 2023)
▪ Hackers Planted Files to Frame an Indian Priest Who Died in Custody (Wired / Dec 2022)
▪ Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired / June 2022)
▪ Leaked Data Shows Surveillance Net in Elgar Parishad Case May Have Crossed a Line (The Wire / July 2021)
▪ They were Accused of plotting to overthrow the Modi government – The evidence was planted, a new report says (Washington Post / Feb 2021)
▪ Why the letter about a ‘Rajiv Gandhi-type’ assassination plot to kill Modi is fake (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jun 11, 2018)

Conjuring the BK16 Myth: How the Elgar Parishad case rests on fiction and deception

21/03/2025 Asha

Dispatches: A Conversation on unravelling the Elgar Parishad / Bhima Koregaon case with Prashant Rahi, Mouli Sharma and Arshu John

By The Polis Project / @project_polis

With Prashant Rahi, Mouli Sharma and Arshu John
By The Polis Project / @project_polis
en | 49min | 2025
Listen to the recording on X Spaces Live

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

Also read:
▪ Why caste Hindutva, not an Elgar conspiracy, is at the root of the Bhima Koregaon violence (The Polis Project / Feb 2025)
▪ THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES (THE POLIS PROJECT / JUNE 2024-March 2025)
▪ My 7 years in Anda cell were the most inhuman form of solitary confinement: Prashant Rahi (rediff.com / Mar 2024)
▪ The Bhima Koregaon Arrests and the Resistance in India (Monthly Review / Apr 2022)

NIA had no role in denying Stan Swamy sipper: Former chief blames Uddhav govt

21/03/2025 Asha

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

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

Also read:
▪ SC takes up the cause of disabled prisoners on the basis of a plea invoking Saibaba, Stan Swamy (The Hindu / March 2025)
▪ Some personal reflections on prison medical care (The Leaflet | Vernon Gonsalves | Apr 2024)
▪ Indian court again refuses to hear Stan Swamy case (UCA News / Sep 2024)
▪ Caged birds and prison songs: In chorus, Stan Swamy and the Bhima Koregaon accused kept hope alive (Scroll.in | by Vernon Gonsalves | Jul 2023)
▪ How the system broke Stan Swamy: A cell mate recalls the activist’s last days in prison (Scroll.in | by Arun Ferreira | Aug 2021)

The Erosion Of Judicial Independence / Eternal Adjournments Undermine Constitutional Values

10/03/2025 Asha

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.
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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

Also read:
▪ Bail for Bhima Koregaon accused highlights extraordinary delay in trial (Scroll.in / Jan 2025)
▪ Year after being granted bail, Mahesh Raut remains in jail as stay extended (The Indian Express / Sep 2024)
▪ Why the SC Judgment Granting Bail to Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira Is So Significant (The Wire / Jul 2023)
▪ The terror of an anti-terror law in India: A short story of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (The Polis Project / Feb 2023)
▪ Inconsistencies in Bail Orders Mean Individual Liberty Is the Outcome of Judicial Lottery (The Wire / Oct 2022)

Approver | A Poem From Prison by Sudhir Dhawale

22/02/2025 Asha

Outlook India / by Sudhir Dhawale, translated from Marathi to English by Vernon Gonsalves

Dalit rights activist Sudhir Dhawale, accused in the Bhima Koregaon case wrote this poem in prison on ‘Why he will not collaborate’
… The following poem is an ode to his artiste friends Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor from Kabir Kala Manch, who were arrested in connection with the same case in 2020 by the National Investigation Agency. Before their arrests, the duo released a video, disclosing that they were being threatened by security agencies to turn an approver and spend less time behind bars. The two continue to remain imprisoned.

I didn’t plant the bomb,
I didn’t even dream of it,
I shall not collaborate, with you.

Read the poem in full

Also read/watch:
▪ Sudhir Dhawale interview: ‘The law remains blind to injustice even with the blindfold gone’ (Scroll.in / Feb 2025)
▪ Interview | Sudhir Dhawale’s Work Will Go on (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order] (Sabrangindia / Jan 2025)
▪ WE ARE CHILDREN OF AMBEDKAR: Shahir Ramesh and Sagar

hindi/english subtitles | 07:26min | 2020

Shahir Sagar Gorkhe and Shahir Ramesh Gaichor, prominent members of Bhima Koregaon Shauryadin Prerna Abhiyan and Kabir Kala Manch, found themselves at the receiving end of the BJP government’s actions when they were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on 7th September 2020.
Both Shahir Sagar Gorkhe and Shahir Ramesh Gaichor have asserted that the NIA forced them to provide false testimony against those already arrested. They were coerced into writing confessional statements seeking forgiveness and implicating other individuals in the case. However, their steadfast refusal to comply with these unjust demands has put them at risk of being arrested by the NIA.
In a recorded video statement, Sagar emphasized their commitment to following the constitution and their allegiance to Dr. Ambedkar, stating, “We aren’t progenies of Savarkar but are children of Dr. Ambedkar. Confessing to things we have never done is out of the question.”

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