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New Book on Bhima Koregaon Case Tells Uncomfortable Truths, But Brings Hope / Book launch

New Book on Bhima Koregaon Case Tells Uncomfortable Truths, But Brings Hope / Book launch

New Book on Bhima Koregaon Case Tells Uncomfortable Truths, But Brings Hope

31/04/2024

The Quint / by Mekhala Saran

Alpa Shah’s book, ‘The Incarcerations’, is alive with stories of fearlessness, but also of the cost it extracts.

“Well, I am off to NIA custody and do not know when I shall be able to talk to you again. However, I earnestly hope that you will speak out before your turn comes.”

– Anand Teltumbde, on the eve of his incarceration in April 2020

Alpa Shah’s book on the Bhima Koregaon incarcerations is not an easy read. When I first decided to review the book – before laying my hands on it – I thought it would not take me longer than a week.
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A new book recounts how 16 activists were imprisoned as terrorists, without trial

27/03/2024

Scroll.in / by Alpa Shah

An excerpt from ‘The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India’
Amnesty International India and Oxfam India released a joint response the day Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao were arrested. “The nationwide crackdown on activists, advocates and human rights defenders is disturbing and threatens core human rights values.”
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by Shireen Azam / @shireenazam (March 26:)
A full full house at @LSEpublicevents for the book release of (Bhima Koregaon) Incarcerations by @alpashah001


Video| Book launch/discussion: The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the search for democracy in India

26/03/2024

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute, LSE Human Rights, Department of Anthropology and Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity

IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PUBLIC EVENT

Speakers:
Professor Alpa Shah.
Discussants: Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor Tarun Khaitan and Priyanka Kotamraju
Chair: Professor Deborah James

Join us to launch and discuss Alpa Shah’s new book, The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the search for democracy in India.
As general elections fast approach in the world’s largest democracy, this event asks what democracy today must urgently ensure for our common future. In her latest book, Alpa Shah pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, artists – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists.
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Watch on LSE’s YouTube channel.


Interview | Alpa Shah: India is not a safe place any more

23/03/2024

The News Statesman / by  Gavin Jacobson

Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacism is capturing major state institutions while repressing minority groups and political activists.
… Shah exposes how the state engaged in a prolonged act of cyberwar against the so-called “BK-16”, hacking their emails and implanting incriminating evidence on their computers in order to prosecute them. It is the best book I’ve read about the full-scale assault on democracy in India, and with the general elections scheduled to conclude in June, it’s essential reading for an understanding of what is happening to the country right now.
On 18 March I met Shah at her office at the London School of Economics.

Gavin Jacobson: When did you decide to write a book about the BK-16?
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Hackers-for-Hire, Govt’s Media Control: Seven Takeaways From Studying the Arrests of the BK-16

15/03/2024

The Wire / by Alpa Shah

“…the evidence used to incarcerate the BK-16 was likely to have been implanted remotely through a hacker-for-hire mercenary gang infrastructure that has clients all over the world, but whose epicentre is in India.”
Excerpted with permission from Alpa Shah’s The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India, HarperCollins 2024.
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Hacker-for-hire gang with links to Pune police planted emails on the computers of Bhima Koregaon accused: new book

14/03/2024

The Hindu / by Vijaita Singh

The mercenary hacker gang, headquartered in India, remotely implanted evidence, according to LSE professor’s book; cites cybersecurity researchers to claim gang’s connection to a Pune police officer
The alleged evidence used to incarcerate 16 people in the Bhima Koregaon case was “likely to have been implanted remotely through a hacker-for-hire mercenary gang infrastructure that has clients all over the world, but whose epicentre is in India,” according to claims made in a new book.
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The arrests putting Narendra Modi’s ‘fascist’ India on trial

14/03/2024

The Telegraph / by Andrew Whitehead

Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest, died in custody in India in July 2021. He was 84. He had spent nine months in detention and had been repeatedly denied bail; yet he had not been convicted of any offence.
… Alpa Shah, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, argues in The Incarcerations that the arrest of Swamy and 15 others – lawyers, academics, poets, activists – in what has become known as the “BK case” reveals India’s authoritarian creep.
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Also read:
Why Courts Are Ignoring Concerns Of Planted Evidence In The Bhima-Koregaon Prosecution (article14 / Jan 2023)
Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired.com / June 2022)

From Bhima Koregaon to PMLA, Justice Khanwilkar’s Legacy Will Not Favour Liberty

From Bhima Koregaon to PMLA, Justice Khanwilkar’s Legacy Will Not Favour Liberty

From Bhima Koregaon to PMLA, Justice Khanwilkar’s Legacy Will Not Favour Liberty

30/07/2022

The Quint / by Vakasha Sachdev

From his decisions on Bhima Koregaon in 2018 to PMLA in 2022, Justice Khanwilkar consistently enabled state power.
The legacy of Justice AM Khanwilkar, who retired as a Supreme Court judge on Friday, 29 July, can best be summed up by the first case where he came to prominence.
In August 2018, the Maharashtra Police made the second set of arrests in what would come to be known as the Bhima Koregaon case.
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Justice AM Khanwilkar’s Legacy: Regression of Fundamental Rights

30/07/2022

Live Law / by Manu Sebastian

When it came to the exercise of judicial review and protection of fundamental rights, Justice Khanwilkar displayed a narrow and technical approach.
… Here is a look at some judgments/orders authored by Justice Khanwilkar in cases relating to civil liberties.
Rejecting plea for SIT probe in Bhima Koregaon case.
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Also read
The Executive(’s) Court: On the Legacy of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar (The Wire / July 2022)
Not A Case Of Arrest For Dissent, SC Turns Down Plea For SIT In Bhima Koregaon Case By 2:1 Majority, Chandrachud Dissents [Read Judgment] (Live Law / Sep 2018)
Justice Chandrachud dissents again: Bhima Koregaon case needs impartial investigation (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)

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

Three years after Bhima Koregaon: How criminal law was violated

Three years after Bhima Koregaon: How criminal law was violated

The Leaflet / by Nihalsing B Rathod

Recalling his bruising experiences with an unjust criminal justice system as part of the legal team of the activists arrested in the questionable Bhima Koregaon violence case three years ago, Nihalsing B Rathod, in this second of a three-part series, recollects how basic tenets of criminal law were violated by the Pune Police in arresting Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Arun Fereira, and Vernon Gonsalves at various points, and extending their detention, as well as that of Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale and Mahesh Raut. All this while, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde exhausted all legal options to evade arrest, as the judiciary looked on, condoning the deprivation of the activists’ liberty and denying their bail applications, sometimes making gestures that filled the activists’ legal team with hope but ultimately continuing the farce that is the Bhima-Koregaon travesty.
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Also read part one: Bhima Koregaon: Marking three years since the first arrest (June 7, 2021)

Video: Bhima Koregaon accused continue to wait for bail

Video: Bhima Koregaon accused continue to wait for bail

InOldNews / by InOldNews

Vira Sathidar, a poet, writer, activist, and also one of the editors of a radical Anti-Caste Marathi Magazine ‘Vidrohi’ talks about incarceration of Sudhir Dhawale, founder of Vidrohi. Sudhir Dhawale along with two other activists- Surendra Gadhling and Prof. Shoma Sen were arrested by Police from Nagpur and are still in jail. These were among the first few arrests of Human rights activists by Modi Government under charges of being involved in Bhima Koregaon Violence and in a plot to assassinate PM Modi. The magazine stopped its publication due to various reasons, one being the constant threat of police surveillance.
Watch video

From FIR to Malware Claims: A Timeline of the Bhima Koregaon Case

From FIR to Malware Claims: A Timeline of the Bhima Koregaon Case

The Quint / by Vakasha Sachdev

When exactly did the Bhima Koregaon case, as it has come to be known, begin?
Was it on the day the first set of activists were arrested, back in June 2018? Was it the day when malware was allegedly planted on the computers of at least one of the accused, two years before that? Or do we have to go all the way back to the Battle of Bhima Koregaon itself to understand what’s really going on with this case?
Here’s a complete timeline of this controversial case: from its origins in a dodgy FIR, to the moment the Supreme Court could have nipped all this in the bud; and from the filing of 3 charge sheets, to the 16 arrests made under its vague and dubious mandate.
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Video: Tracking India’s crackdown on dissent

Video: Tracking India’s crackdown on dissent


en | 5:04 min | 2020

Peoples Dispatch / by Peoples Dispatch

June 6 marks the second anniversary of the arrest of activists in India as part of the Bhima Koregaon or Elgar Parishad case. This case has become a prime example of the targeting of those who are critical of India’s current far-right wing government led by prime minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In this video, we look at the case and those who are being targeted.
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Travesty of Justice – Persecution of Human Rights Defenders

Travesty of Justice – Persecution of Human Rights Defenders

By Civil Liberties Committee (AP &Telangana State)

We cannot forget 2018. In fact that the violence in Bhimakoregaon in Maharashtra on January 2018 was a planned and organized by the RSS and other Hindhutva outfits in order to foil Edgar Parishat, a conglomeration of dalits, bahujans and minorities who gathered in a single  platform. The Parishad proclaimed to fight against fascist hindutva forces and reclaim Constitution and its ideals. In the months of June and August the Maharashtra Police raided selectively the houses of human rights and social activists across the country.
Read full statement

Bhima Koregaon Case: A glaring example of Hindutva lies

Bhima Koregaon Case: A glaring example of Hindutva lies

Siasat.com / by N Venugopal

New Delhi: Hindutva – the official guiding principle of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and all the members in its parivar – is an embodiment of lies, fabrication, distortion, deception, obfuscation, hatred and unleashing violence. If one thought that this characterization is an ideological subjective opinion, it is better to look at this glaring example of Bhima Koregaon violence case, a subject of gross obfuscation of facts and inhuman incarceration of public-spirited individuals over the last two years.
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Video: Dissent Under UAPA, Bhima Koregaon

Video: Dissent Under UAPA, Bhima Koregaon


hindi, en | 1:41:48 | 2020

By Shaamil Ahmedabad

This panel, featuring Susan Abraham, Prabodhan Pol, Mihir Desai and Nihalsing Rathod, takes a closer look at the arrests of and cases against the 11 activists detained after Bhima Koregaon, and places the events within the context of caste, community and Maharashtra political dynamics. This is part 1 of a two-part series on UAPA and state suppression of dissent.
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