Browsed by
Tag: Anand Teltumbde

Videos | ‘Called a Terrorist, Denied COVID Treatment’ / Anand Teltumbde speaks about his years in prison

Videos | ‘Called a Terrorist, Denied COVID Treatment’ / Anand Teltumbde speaks about his years in prison

Video | ‘Called a Terrorist, Denied COVID Treatment’: Anand Teltumbde Talks Jail Horrors


en | 48:23min | 2025

The Quint / Eshwar Gole in conversation with Anand Teltumbde

Anand Teltumbde, social activist accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, discusses imprisonment, Ambedkar, and caste.
On the landmark 50th episode of Badi Badi Baatein, Teltumbde revisits the years that tested his faith in the justice system, recalls the silences of prison nights, the impact on his family, the fleeting warmth of letters from home — and the unshakeable spirit of Father Stan Swamy, who became a symbol of moral courage.
Read more
Watch video


Video | Anand Teltumbde opens up about his years in prison


en | 42:12min | 2025
Video production team: Akhtarista Ansari, Saleem Ul Haq, Sonia Chand & Nidhi Jacob

Maktoob / Nikita Jain in conversation with Anand Teltumbde

Human rights defender and scholar Anand Teltumbde opens up about his years in prison, his new autobiography The Cell and the Soul, and what life has been like since his release with Maktoob’s Nikita Jain. Teltumbde, implicated in the Elgar Parishad–Bhima Koregaon case in 2018, spent 31 months in jail before being released on bail in November 2022. He reflects on the emotional toll of incarceration, the losses he faced, and the strength that kept him going. Watch as Teltumbde discusses survival, resistance, and reclaiming life after imprisonment, a powerful account of endurance and conviction.
Watch video


Also read

The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir

Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order

Marking the death anniversary of Father Stan Swamy: An Elegy For A Comrade

Marking the death anniversary of Father Stan Swamy: An Elegy For A Comrade

Illustration by #bakeryprasad

An Elegy For A Comrade: Excerpt From The Cell And The Soul By Anand Teltumbde

19/10/2025

Outlook / by Anand Teltumbde

‘The Cell And The Soul’ Marks the first death anniversary of Father Stan Swamy, these reflections were written from within the Anda cell—recalling the loss, the silence that followed, and the conditions that led to his passing.
Stan Swamy’s death was an unbearable loss to us, the BK-16—a quasi-family bound together by the regime’s foul design to silence dissent. At 84, Stan remained remarkably healthy, save for his Parkinsonian tremors and impaired hearing. His death was not of age, but of neglect—born of a judiciary and prison system that habitually withholds medical care until crisis, refusing outside treatment for fear of exposing the emptiness of prison hospitals. Stan’s passing was the price of this callousness.
Read more


Also read:
Father Stan Swamy died of natural causes, Maharashtra government tells court (India Today / Oct 2025)
‘I’m going to live to 185’: Anand Teltumbde remembers his friend Stan Swamy in his memoir (Scroll.in | Anand Teltumbde | Sep 2025)
I saw firsthand how callous prison officials and their negligence led to Stan Swamy’s death (Scroll.in | by Arun Ferreira | Jul 2025)
Daring, Fearless and Kind, Father Stan Swamy Remains a Beacon of Resistance (The Wire | by Hany Babu, Jyoti Jagtap, Mahesh Raut, Ramesh Murlidhar Gaichor, Sagar Gorkhe, Surendra Gadling | Jul 2025)
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 Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir

Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order

Conversation with Anand Teltumbde / Excerpts and Book Reviews of ‘THE CELL AND THE SOUL’

Conversation with Anand Teltumbde / Excerpts and Book Reviews of ‘THE CELL AND THE SOUL’

“The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir” by Anand Teltumbde stands as one of the most powerful indictments of Indian democracy

27/10/2025

Countercurrents.org / by Harsh Thakor

“The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir” by Anand Teltumbde is not merely a prison memoir but a profound exposition of the Indian state, society, and criminal justice system, revealing their inhumane nature. It stands as one of the most powerful indictments of a democracy teetering on the brink of collapse. The book lucidly explores the stark realities of prison life in India, chronicling not only Teltumbde’s personal struggles but also those of his co-accused, serving as a testament to the resilient spirit of countless imprisoned activists.
Read more


Anand Teltumbde’s The Cell And The Soul Highlights Urgent Need For Prisons Reforms In India

19/10/2025

Outlook / by Kabir Deb

Anand Teltumbde’s book offers us a significant insight into prisons, those who run them and how they contribute to the deterioration of judicial processing.
… Anand Teltumbde’s The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir presents before us a mirror in which we get to see our shattered democracy. From 2018 to 2019, the arrest of sixteen intellectuals with the help of fabricated documents, emails and voice recordings shook the liberty of this nation.
Read more


An Elegy For A Comrade: Excerpt From The Cell And The Soul By Anand Teltumbde

19/10/2025

Outlook / by Anand Teltumbde

‘The Cell And The Soul’ Marks the first death anniversary of Father Stan Swamy, these reflections were written from within the Anda cell—recalling the loss, the silence that followed, and the conditions that led to his passing.
Stan Swamy’s death was an unbearable loss to us, the BK-16—a quasi-family bound together by the regime’s foul design to silence dissent. At 84, Stan remained remarkably healthy, save for his Parkinsonian tremors and impaired hearing. His death was not of age, but of neglect—born of a judiciary and prison system that habitually withholds medical care until crisis, refusing outside treatment for fear of exposing the emptiness of prison hospitals. Stan’s passing was the price of this callousness.
Read more


The Cell and the Soul: Inside Anand Teltumbde’s prison reflection

18/10/2025

The New Indian Express / by Paramita Ghosh

Academic and a former corporate CEO, Anand Teltumbde, on his recently published part-prison notebook, part-memoir of his 31-month stay in Taloja Central Prison as an undertrial in connection to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case
… A conversation with him on the recent publication of The Cell and the Soul (Bloomsbury), his part-prison memoir, part-prison diary.
Read more


Book review: Anand Teltumbde’s memoir shows why prison is a mirror image of society, except the delusion of freedom

18/10/2025

The Leaflet / by Abdul Wahid Shaikh

Acquitted in the 7/11 Mumbai blasts case, a prison rights activist reviews the prison memoir of another – a searing reading on intellectual stifling, of loosening faith in the judiciary, and why the Bhima Koregaon case is a landmark indeed.
Abdul Wahid Shaikh is a Mumbai based prison rights activist who runs the Innocent’s Network which advocates against wrongful convictions. Shaikh was acquitted in 2015 after nine years in Arthur Road Jail in the 7/11 Mumbai train bombings. He is the author of ‘Innocent Prisoner’, ‘Ishrat Jahan Encounter Case’ and an upcoming book ‘Fair Trial?’

Anand Teltumbde’s ‘THE CELL AND THE SOUL’ is not just a prison memoir., it is a mirror to the Indian state, society and criminal justice system.
It refrains from fitting into the neat category of carceral literature, refusing to limit itself into description of everyday mundane life of prison.
Read more


Review of The Cell and the Soul by Anand Teltumbde

17/10/2025

The Hindu / by G. Sampath

Teltumbde’s Taloja jail memoir is a pathology report on the cancerous rot eating away at the criminal justice system
What is the definition of a crime? “Crime is what the police think it is,” writes Anand Teltumbde, a scholar activist who spent 31 months in jail as an undertrial in connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case. “By this definition, police are free to arrest you, slap whatever sections they like on you and put you behind bars. Yes, the Constitution gives you the remedy of approaching the courts. But that would take years to settle, whether you committed a crime or not. Until then, you are …a beggar for bail.”
Read more


“Punitive actions against prisoners are seen as a demonstration of administrative control”

14/10/2025

The Caravan / by Anand Teltumbde

In The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, the scholar and activist Anand Teltumbde writes about his incarceration in Taloja Central Prison. He spent 31 months in prison, as an undertrial in what is broadly termed the Bhima Koregaon case, before being released on bail in November 2022. In this excerpt from the book, he reflects on the prison’s surveillance system, its bureaucracy and various systemic failures, including suspensions of phone facilities and rejections of applications from prisoners.
Read more


The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir

Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order


Also read:
‘I’m going to live to 185’: Anand Teltumbde remembers his friend Stan Swamy in his memoir (Scroll.in | Anand Teltumbde | Sep 2025)
BK-16 Prison Diaries: Anand Teltumbde reflects on his arrest and incarceration (THE POLIS PROJECT | Anand Teltumbde | June 2024)

Reading and writing kept my spirit unbroken: Anand Teltumbde

Reading and writing kept my spirit unbroken: Anand Teltumbde

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

Frontline / by Anand Teltumbde

The scholar and activist on the books that shaped his politics, how reading 179 books in jail kept him intellectually alive, and more.
Anand Teltumbde is a scholar, writer, and public intellectual whose work spans technology, management, and social justice. He has authored 33 books and contributed extensively to leading journals and periodicals, offering sharp theoretical insights on caste, oppression, and contemporary India. As a committed activist, he has played a significant role in India’s civil rights movement.
Read more


The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir


Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order


Also read:
‘I’m going to live to 185’: Anand Teltumbde remembers his friend Stan Swamy in his memoir (Scroll.in | Anand Teltumbde | Sep 2025)
BK-16 Prison Diaries: Anand Teltumbde reflects on his arrest and incarceration (THE POLIS PROJECT | Anand Teltumbde | June 2024)

Delhi University Vice Chancellor’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’ draws ire

Delhi University Vice Chancellor’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’ draws ire

Pic credits: MR online

PUCL condemns regressive and defamatory views of DU Vice Chancellor Prof. Yogesh Singh: At odds with Constitutional values

09/10/2025

Countercurrents.org / by  People’s Union For Civil Liberties

People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) India, is shocked at the troubling  views expressed by Dr Yogesh Singh, professor and Vice Chancellor Delhi University  on 28th September, 2025 in a  speech titled “Naxal Mukt Bharat: Ending Red Terror Under Modi’s Leadership, Why Campuses are Targets?’

In the over 20 minute speech, replete with unsubstantiated  and defamatory statements about alleged “urban naxals” on campus, Prof Singh named Delhi university’s professors and student activists charged and imprisoned under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, including members of the feminist student group Pinjar Tod (Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal), charged in the Delhi riots case and Prof Hany Babu and professors Dr Shoma Sen and Dr Anand Teltumbde (mispronounced by Prof Singh as Teltumbedke), charged in the Bhima Koregaon case.
Read more


Delhi University V-C’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’, Pinjra Tod movement draws ire

08/10/2025

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh’s speech alleging the presence of “Urban Naxals” in universities and criticising movements like ‘Pinjra Tod’ has triggered protests from students and faculty.
… Referring to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, Singh named DU professor Hany Babu and academics Rona Wilson and Anand Teltumbde, saying, “And these are not isolated cases.”
Read more


Also read:
As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent (The Wire / Jul 2025)
Insecurity By Law: A Critique of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill in the Context of India’s Banning Regime (PUDR / Jul 2025)
McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey! (The Crossbill / Jul 2024)
From ‘tukde tukde gang’ to ‘urban Naxal’: How media trials enable the government to stifle dissent (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)

Bombay HC refuses to allow Anand Teltumbde to travel abroad for lectures

Bombay HC refuses to allow Anand Teltumbde to travel abroad for lectures

Bombay HC refuses to allow Bhima Koregaon accused Anand Teltumbde to travel abroad for lectures

01/10/2025

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

The National Investigation Agency had opposed the activist’s travel to Europe, raising concerns that he might abscond.
The Bombay High Court on Wednesday refused to allow writer and activist Anand Teltumbde, one of the 16 persons accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, to travel to Europe to deliver a series of lectures and seminars at universities, Live Law reported.
Read more


Bombay High Court Refuses To Allow Dr Anand Teltumbde To Travel Abroad For Delivering Lecture

01/10/2025

Live Law / by Narsi Benwal

After the Bombay High Court on Wednesday expressed disinclination to permit rights’ activist Dr Anand Teltumbde to travel to Amsterdam and the United Kingdom for attending academic assignments, the accused in the Elgar Parishad – Bhima Koregaon case, withdrew his plea.
Read more


Teltumbde withdraws foreign travel plea after HC shows reluctance

01/10/2025

Hindustan Times / by pti

Elgar case: Teltumbde withdraws foreign travel plea after HC shows reluctance
Mumbai, Academician Anand Teltumbde, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, on Wednesday withdrew his petition seeking permission to travel abroad to deliver lectures after the Bombay High Court expressed its disinclination to allow it.
Read more


Also read:
Anti-terror agency seeks to seize Anand Teltumbde’s passport (India Today / Sep 2025)
NIA opposes Anand Teltumbde’s plea to travel abroad, cites risk of absconding (The Hindu / April 2025)
Will the bail granted to Anand Teltumbde help others in the Bhima Koregaon case to get out of jail? (Scroll.in / Nov 2022)

NIA files plea to impound passports of Anand Teltumbde, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Gautam Navlakha, Hany Babu

NIA files plea to impound passports of Anand Teltumbde, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Gautam Navlakha, Hany Babu

Anti-terror agency seeks to seize Anand Teltumbde’s passport

30/09/2025

India Today / by Vidya

A total of 16 people were arrested in the Elgar Parishad case, which pertained to an event organised at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on the eve of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima on December 31, 2017.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed an application before a special court in Mumbai, seeking directions to impound the passports of Anand Teltumbde, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Gautam Navlakha, and Hany Babu — the five accused in the 2018 Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
Read more


NIA files plea to impound passports of 5 accused in Elgaar case

30/09/2025

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

Special public prosecutor Prakash Shetty on Monday moved the plea citing provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a plea before the special court seeking directions to impound passports of five accused arrested in the Elgaar Parishad case. The court has directed the accused to file their replies.
… The court will likely hear the plea on October 9. The trial in the case is yet to begin.
Read more


Also read:
NIA opposes Anand Teltumbde’s plea to travel abroad, cites risk of absconding (The Hindu / April 2025)
Bhima-Koregaon case transferred to NIA to compromise independent probe: Front Line Defenders (Jan 2020)

‘I’m going to live to 185’: Anand Teltumbde remembers his friend Stan Swamy in his memoir

‘I’m going to live to 185’: Anand Teltumbde remembers his friend Stan Swamy in his memoir

Poster by #bakeryprasad

Scroll.in / by Anand Teltumbde

An excerpt from Teltumbde’s prison memoir ‘The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir’.
I did not realise that when I said, “Don’t come back here,” to Stan while seeing him off at the gate of the jail hospital, it would prove ominous.
It was May 28, 2021, and Arun Ferreira and I drove him in a wheelchair to the gate of the jail hospital, extremely happy over the Bombay High Court order to shift him to the Holy Family Hospital, albeit for only 15 days.
Read more


The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir


Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order


Also read:
I saw firsthand how callous prison officials and their negligence led to Stan Swamy’s death (Scroll.in | by Arun Ferreira | Jul 2025)
Daring, Fearless and Kind, Father Stan Swamy Remains a Beacon of Resistance (The Wire | by Hany Babu, Jyoti Jagtap, Mahesh Raut, Ramesh Murlidhar Gaichor, Sagar Gorkhe, Surendra Gadling | Jul 2025)
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)

Anand Teltumbde chronicles his 31-month stay in Taloja jail

Anand Teltumbde chronicles his 31-month stay in Taloja jail

Hindustan Times / by Prawesh Lama

Scholar activist Anand Teltumbde offers an insider’s account of life behind bars in his book – The Cell and the Soul
What unfolded inside prisons while the nation battled the Covid-19 pandemic? How does corruption between jailers and prisoners thrive behind bars? And how are rules quietly bent for high-profile prisoners held in Maharashtra’s infamous Anda cells — the high-security egg-shaped units?
Read more


The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir


Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.

Read more / order


Also read:
In Maharashtra, Fadnavis’s Foray to Capture Bhima-Koregaon (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2025)
BK-16 Prison Diaries: Anand Teltumbde reflects on his arrest and incarceration (THE POLIS PROJECT / June 2024)
THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES (THE POLIS PROJECT)

▪ The Feared – Conversations with Eleven Political Prisoners

Author: Neeta Kolhatkar
Publishing Date: Dec 2024
Publisher: S&S India
Pages: 272
Read more / order

▪ From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada

Author: Sudha Bhardwaj
Publishing Date: Oct 2023
Publisher: Juggernaut
Pages: 216
Read more / order

Maharashtra Special Public Security Act, Pre-Emptive Criminalisation And Indefinite Surveillance

Maharashtra Special Public Security Act, Pre-Emptive Criminalisation And Indefinite Surveillance

Pic credits: MR online

Outlook / by Anand Teltumbde

The MSPSA gives the state-corporate nexus the legal means to suppress participatory democracy under the guise of public security.
On July 10, 2025, the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha passed a revised version of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Act (MSPSA), exactly one year after the original draft was introduced on July 11, 2024, by the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition under Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Initially framed as a response to the perceived threat of “urban Naxalism”, the Bill claimed to address the alleged infiltration of Maoist ideology into urban areas through affiliated organisations offering logistical support and shelter to underground cadres.
Read more


Also read:
Fall of Democracy’s Last Bastion: Election Commission as the BJP’s Strategic Shield (The Wire | by Anand Teltumbde | Aug 2025)
New Maharashtra Security Law Open To Abuse, Threatens Rights; Say ‘No’ To It (Deccan Chronicle / Aug 2025)
The Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill Perpetuates India’s Banning Regime (The Wire / Aug 2025)
Insecurity By Law: A Critique of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill in the Context of India’s Banning Regime (PUDR / Jul 2025)
As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent (The Wire / Jul 2025)