BK16 – free them all

Criminalizing Dissent: Maharashtra’s Urban Naxal Bill and its New War on Civil Society

23/07/2025 Asha

Maharashtra’s Urban Naxal Bill and its New War on Civil Society -Criminalizing Dissent

23/07/2025

Countercurrents / by Dr Ranjan Solomon

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, not silent submission.”
(Inspired by Thomas Jefferson)

The Maharashtra government’s Special Public Security Bill, 2024, introduced to counter so-called “urban Naxal” activities is a perilous milestone in India’s accelerating slide into authoritarianism.
… Activists like Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, and the late Fr. Stan Swamy were imprisoned for years without trial under charges of sedition and conspiracy. The Bhima Koregaon case was a dress rehearsal for exactly the kind of repression this bill now makes routine at the state level.
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‘Urban Naxal’ To Maharashtra’s New Bill Rekindles Fears Of Criminalised Dissent

17/07/2025

Outlook / by Pritha Vashisth

The Bhima Koregaon case returns to focus as the Supreme Court allows bail plea revival—while Maharashtra’s sweeping Jan Suraksha Bill raises alarms over civil liberties, ambiguous terms, and the creeping criminalisation of protest.
A tiny pore of blood rinsed down the alley until one among the several injured was dead. Around seven years ago, on January 1, 2018, silence hovered over the annual celebration as a Hindu mob allegedly attacked a gathering assembled to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. Decorated with plays, speeches, and songs, the state soon strangled this small village in Pune.
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Maharashtra just passed a law that could jail you for peacefully protesting

16/07/2025

Frontline / by Amey Tirodkar

BJP-led government says it’s fighting “Urban Maoists”, but critics say the MSPS Bill is the biggest threat to free speech since the Emergency.
Days after the ruling BJP at the Centre and in Maharashtra observed the 50th anniversary of the Emergency and the curtailment of freedoms it entailed, the Maha Yuti government, led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, passed the Maharashtra Special Public Security (MSPS) Bill, 2024, by voice vote in the Legislative Assembly on July 10.
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Also read:
▪ As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent (The Wire / Jul 2025)
▪ A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism (The Wire / Jul 2024)

When the Law Becomes a Weapon: India’s Broken Promise of Justice

21/07/2025 Asha

Countercurrents.org / by Dr Ranjan Solomon

“Innocence, once lost to the gallows or a prison cell, can never be returned. Who pays for that injustice?”
Today, the Bombay High Court overturned what had once been touted as a major victory in India’s fight against terror: the conviction of 12 men in the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, in which 189 people died. Five had been sentenced to death. The other seven, to life in prison. They had already spent over 18 years behind bars.
The High Court has ruled that the prosecution “utterly failed” to prove its case.
…
We must ask: What kind of justice system jails people without trial for 5, 10, 15 years—and then quietly lets them go when the truth catches up?
Do we even pause to think of the lives destroyed?
– Father Stan Swamy, 84 years old, arrested under UAPA, denied a straw for his Parkinson’s, died in custody without trial.
– Professor G.N. Saibaba, wheelchair-bound, imprisoned for years, only recently acquitted.
– The Bhima Koregaon 16—intellectuals and lawyers framed with tampered evidence, still awaiting justice.
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Also read:
▪ Supreme Court stays HC verdict acquitting 12 in 2006 Mumbai train blasts case (Scroll.in / Jul 24, 2025)
▪ 7/11 Judgment Fails to Hold Police Accountable For Custodial Torture, Lost Time of Those Acquitted (The Wire / Jul 2025)
▪ Police torture, ill-treatment make India ‘high risk’: Report (Newslaundry / June 2025)
▪ Read India report: INDIA – COUNTRY FACTSHEET 2025 (World Organization Against Torture / Jun 2025)
▪ G.N. Saibaba’s Lifelong Campaign Was Against the Violence of Silencing (The Wire | by Rona Wilson | Oct 2024)
▪ ‘It Is Only by Chance That I Came Out of Prison Alive’: G.N. Saibaba (The Wire / March 2024)

UN experts, Freedom House, USCIRF call on US to designate India as “Country of Particular Concern”

19/07/2025 Asha

Maktoobmedia.com / by Maktoob Staff

Senior officials from the United Nations and the United States, along with leading human rights experts, urged the US government to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) due to its serious and ongoing human rights and religious freedom violations.
…
Ed O’Donovan also spoke about arrests of activists, academics and lawyers in the Bhima Koregaon case, shuttering of thousands of NGOs by revoking their Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licenses “to stifle dissent and restrict civil society space.”
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Also read:
▪ Civil society group submits memorandum to Vatican on ‘targeted violence’ against Christians in India (Scroll.in / Jul 2025)
▪ Read India report: INDIA – COUNTRY FACTSHEET 2025 (World Organization Against Torture / Jun 2025)

▪ The State of Religious Freedom in India (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom / May 2025)
▪ India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS / Dec 2024)
▪ Pegasus Reports Highlight Need for Better Regulation of Spyware: UN Rights Chief (The Wire / Aug 2021)

As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent

13/07/2025 Asha

As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent

13/07/2025

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

None of the provisions under the newly introduced bill is not already covered under the existing UAPA or the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) or the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
Despite existing laws that comprehensively address the threat of terrorism in the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Maharashtra government last week introduced yet another bill – the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill – claiming it will tackle the “urban footprint of Naxalism” in the state.
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Maharashtra Public Security Bill: Vague and dangerous for civil liberties

11/07/2025

The Indian Express / by Rohin Bhatt

Instead of the word ‘abetting’, which is commonly used in criminal law, the new law uses the word ‘encouraging’. What amounts to abetting a crime is settled jurisprudence. But the word ‘encouraging’ is alien to criminal law
“When I use a word,” says Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” However, when words are used in a piece of legislation, they cannot mean what the party in power wants them to.
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Maharashtra Assembly passes bill to curb ‘left-wing extremism‘

10/07/2025

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

Opposition leaders expressed concern about its broad language, particularly the definition of the term ‘urban Naxal’.
… The term “urban Naxals” was first used by Union ministers and leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party after several activists and academics were arrested in the Elgar Parishad case in 2018. Since then, the term has often been used to describe some dissidents of the Narendra Modi government.
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Also read:
▪ A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism (The Wire / Jul 2024)
▪ What is Maharashtra’s new Bill to curb ‘Naxalism in urban areas’? (The Indian Express / Jul 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)

Thought Police: Is Penalising Dissent The New Normal In Indian Universities?

11/07/2025 Asha

Outlook / by Apeksha Priyadarshini

Are Indian universities turning into suffocating spaces where constant censorship and surveillance is leaving no room for protests or dissenting voices?
… Academics and intellectuals, having anything to say that is remotely critical of the current regime, are wilfully thrown under the bus by their own institutions. Worse, institutions now lead the mob hounding individuals who exercise their right to free expression—a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution.
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Democracy-in-waiting: Voices Of An Imprisoned Conscience

08/07/2025 Asha

Outlook / by Apeksha Priyadarshini

The continuing imprisonment of some of the country’s brightest minds will persist as an indelible taint on the history of a nation state that prides itself as a democracy.
… The same dissent that was criminalised by the British to suppress the anti-colonial struggle nearly a century ago, continues to be treated as a threat even today. Umar Khalid, an ex-student activist from JNU, has been in Tihar jail, New Delhi, since September 2020, on charges of partaking in a “conspiracy” that led to the communal violence in Northeast Delhi in February that year.
… Hundreds of kilometres from Delhi, human rights defenders started being arrested in 2018 by the Pune police under the same UAPA. This time, the allegations had involved inciting the violence at Koregaon Bhima in January 2018 and having alleged links with Maoist outfits.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Meeting My Son Umar Khalid In Jail (Outlook / Jul 2025)
▪ Notes From Inside Taloja Prison (Outlook | by Mahesh Raut | Jun 2025)
▪ Inside Taloja Prison: A Study | By Mahesh Raut (Outlook / May 2025)
▪ ‘The Message Is Loud & Clear.’ Author Of New Book On 11 Indian ‘Prisoners Of Conscience’ & The Costs Of Defiance (article 14 / Mar 2025)
▪ Many Prisoners at Taloja Jail Not Produced Before Court For Years, Reveals Survey by Surendra Gadling and Sagar Gorkhe (The Wire / Feb 2025)

The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India – book review

26/06/2025 Asha

Counterfire / by Nandita Lal

The case of a group of writers and activists unjustly imprisoned in India starkly reveals the exploitative nature of Indian capitalism and its international connections, finds Nandita Lal
Alpa Shah’s The Incarcerations is an investigation into the imprisonment of the BK-16, a group of poets, lawyers, professors, and activists wrongfully incarcerated on the pretext of conspiring against the Indian state. Their stories unravel a vast web of transnational surveillance (including the Israeli spyware Pegasus), neoliberal repression through Financial Action Task Force mandates, the rise of Modi’s crony capitalism epitomised by the Adani empire, and ‘internal’ colonialism in Kashmir.
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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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Also read:
▪ Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Pages: 496
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▪ How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners

Authors: Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia
Publishing Date: Aug 2023
Publisher: Pluto Press
Pages: 247
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Today, Emergency Rules! / Police torture, ill-treatment make India ‘high risk’: Report

25/06/2025 Asha

Fifty Years Later… Today, Emergency Rules!

27/06/2025

Countercurrents / by Frederic Prakash

It was fifty years ago! The nation will and should never forget that dark, infamous night of 25/26 June 1975, when, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a state of emergency all over the country, citing internal and external disturbances! That terrible chapter of the country’s history lasted for a full twenty-one-month period till 21 March 1977. … Ironically and tragically, fifty years later…today, emergency still rules!
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India’s Social Regression Under Modi’s Eleven Years May Not Be Mendable

26/06/2025

The Wire / by Anand Teltumbde

While much has been written about the Modi regime’s economic failures and diplomatic missteps, the most insidious damage lies elsewhere – in the corrosion of India’s socio-cultural fabric.
… This damage is evident in the erosion of the country’s pluralistic ethos and the hardening of its deepest societal fault lines. A comparative glance at key social indicators from the pre-2014 era to the present reveals a sharp regression into communal majoritarianism, anti-intellectualism and institutionalised discrimination.
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Police torture, ill-treatment make India ‘high risk’: Report

25/06/2025

Newslaundry / by NL Team

India was among the 26 countries assessed by the World Organization.
India has been ranked a “high-risk” country for torture and ill-treatment in the World Organization Against Torture’s first Global Torture Index 2025 that was released on Wednesday.
… Prominent cases include the Bhima Koregaon trial and the continued incarceration of Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez. The report also raises concern over reprisals against activists monitoring public protests, from anti-Sterlite demonstrators to farmers’ agitations.
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Read India report: INDIA – COUNTRY FACTSHEET 2025 (World Organization Against Torture / Jun 2025)

India among the eight worst countries in the world for torture

26/06/2025

Asia News / by Nirmala Carvalho

The report was presented in Geneva by the World Organisation Against Torture. There were 2,739 deaths in prison in 2024, an increase on the previous year.
… The report also highlights the persecution of human rights defenders as a major concern in India. ‘Torture is used as a weapon to silence them,’ Tiphagne said. He cited the case of Khurram Parvez, who has been in prison for over four years, and the defendants in the Bhima Koregaon case, who are still being held without trial.
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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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Also read:
▪ The Feared – Conversations with Eleven Political Prisoners

Author: Neeta Kolhatkar
Publishing Date: Dec 2024
Publisher: S&S India
Pages: 272
Read more /order
▪ Process as Punishment – Recent books that bear witness to the BK-16’s incarceration (The Caravan / Jul 2024)

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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