By People’s Union for Civil Liberties
Sudha Bharadwaj speaks – A Life in Law and Activism
Publisher: Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL)
Edition: January 2021
Language: English
Sudha Bharadwaj’s interview by: Darshana Mitra and Santanu Chakraborty
Pictures credit: PUCL
Cover Design / Layout: Vinay Jain
Paperback: 316 pages
en | 2h 17min | 2021
The Leaflet / by People’s Union for Civil Liberties
PUCL India and over hundred organisations present:
Three Day consultation on 20th, 21st and 22nd January, 2021
► Repeal UAPA – Day Three (en + … | 2h 51min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day Two (en +… | 2h 22min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day One (en + … | 2h 17min | Jan 2021)
Also watch:
► Why is the state afraid of Sudha Bharadwaj? (en + hindi | 2h 53min | Jan 2021)
► 100 Days of the incarceration of Fr. Stan Swamy (en + hindi | 3h | Jan 2021)
22/01/2021
The Leaflet / by Megha Katheria
Bringing together lawyers, activists, and victims of UAPA, the second day of PUCL’s national consultation on repealing UAPA was packed with heart-wrenching stories of abuse and torture by the law. This underpinned the passionate launch of the campaign to repeal UAPA by PUCL and 100 other organisations. It is similar to the cohesive action by human rights organisations against TADA in 1990s and POTA in the early 2000s.
Read more
21/01/2021
The Leaflet / by Parvathi Sjiv
In a session packed with human stories of abuse and misuse of law where activists and commoners were abused, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) began a three-day session on January 20th with over 100 other organisations comprising advocates, activists and others who spoke about the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
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The Leaflet / by Nihalsing B Rathod
… When news broke that renowned Indian activists and lawyers had become victims of Pegasus, a chill went over all of us. It was an intensely strange experience to learn that we were being snooped on. Some time passed before we could understand what had really happened.
All of us were, in one way or another, connected with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case.
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The Leaflet / by Nihalsing B Rathod
Lawyers who defended activists in the Bhima Koregaon case risked being branded anti-national, but they believed that they were innocent and it was necessary to uphold the rule of law and constitutional values, says Nihalsing B Rathod.
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Counterview / by Nilkantha Mandal, Sandeep Pandey, Kushagra Kumar
Surendra Gadling, now in jail in the Bhima-Koregoan violence case, is a human rights lawyer and Dalit rights activist based in Nagpur. He is known for taking up cases of extra-judicial killings, police excesses and atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis in Gadchiroli and Gondia districts of Maharashtra.
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26/12/2020
Countercurrents / by Kunal Pant
In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor G. N. Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”
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Tweets by American Bar Association – ABA Justice Defenders Program
#India: During the #16DaysOfActivism, we remember detained human rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj. We urge authorities to secure her immediate release in the absence of clear evidence of criminal conduct. @NIA_India #FreeSudha #FreeBhimaKoregaon #16days #OrangeTheWorld
The @chr_aba report found that Ms. Bharadwaj has been subject to numerous fair trial violations, including prejudicial public statements by the police and lack of independent public witnesses. @UN_SPExperts @UNIndepJudges
Also read: The Preliminary Fair Trial Report: Bhima Koregaon (Oct 2019)
CIVICUS: This #16Days we continue the call for #India to free #WHRD Sudha Bharadwaj, an activist and human rights lawyer who has spent over 2 years in detention.
21/11/2020
Live Law / by Radhika Roy
I think that it’s unfair to target a lawyer for appearing for a particular client”, said Justice (Retd.) Madan B. Lokur, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India at a virtual session hosted by Delhi High Court Women Lawyers Forum and Women in Criminal Law Association.
“If a lawyer is dealing with hundreds of COFEPOSA cases, you can’t say that he is also a smuggler. I don’t think the Judge should ever get involved in the relationship between a lawyer and a client”, the judge commented.
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20/11/2020
en | 1h 29min | 2020
By Bar & Bench
The former Supreme Court judge is speaking at a virtual discussion hosted by the Delhi High Court Women Lawyers Forum and WCLA.
Former Supreme Court Judge, Justice (retd.) Madan Lokur is speaking on the theme Defending Liberties in a virtual discussion to be hosted by the Delhi High Court Women Lawyers Forum and WCLA. Justice (retd.) Lokur will interact with Warisha Farasat, Tara Narula, Shalini Gera and Sowjhanya Shankaran during the discussion.
Watch video
Read tweets/summaries by Live Law
31/10/2020
Video statement by Prashand Bhushan
Tomorrow Sudha Bharadwaj is spending her 3rd Birthday in Jail on an absurd charges under UAPA. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, a Professor of NLS, she gave up her US citizenship to work for tribals in Chhattisgarh. We hope she will soon be out to resume her exemplary work there.
Watch video statement (1:42min) here
31/10/2020
By Sudha’s Friends and Family support group
You might be already aware of the infamous Bhima-Koregaon conspiracy case. One of the (now sixteen) activists arrested in the case is Sudha Bharadwaj, a lawyer and trade unionist from Chhattisgarh. On Sunday, 1st November, she will be spending her third birthday in jail, as we, Sudha’s Friends and Family support group, watch in distress.
We stand in solidarity with her.
We were hoping that you could join us in sending her a birthday message – perhaps a short one-minute video on a social media account (Twitter/Facebook/Instagram), perhaps also in other ways you deem fit.
#HappyBirthdaySudha
#FreeBhimaKoregaon16
#FreeSudhaBharadwaj
Just in case you need it, here is a brief bio on her below.
Best regards
On behalf of Sudha’s Friends and Family support group
Sudha was born in 1961 in the USA to economist parents (her mother founded Centre for Economics Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University, her father is also an economist and an academic). She completed integrated MSc (Math) at IIT Kanpur in 1979, and was socially active in various groups on the campus. But – in her own words – her “coming of age” was in 1984 – the year of the Bhopal gas tragedy and the antiSikh riots. After finishing the program at IITK in 1984, she taught at DPS for a couple of years in Delhi where she got exposed to the migrant workers’ struggles during the 1982 Asiad Games.
But by 1986 she decided to relocate to Chhattisgarh, attracted by the inspiring collective of mine workers in Dalli-Rajhara – Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha – which had attracted youth like her from wide across. It was then led by Shaheed Shankar Guha Niyogi who was assassinated a few years after she had joined. Over the years, Sudha took a leading role in the union, and spent decades in the industrial belt of Bilaspur-Durg-Bhilai. She also earned her lawyers credentials along the way, developing a parallel and consequential legal practice.
At the time of her arrest on 28.08.2018, she was teaching at the National Law University in Delhi, was a recognised authority on Labour Law and Constitution Law, and was the National Secretary of the PUCL.
31/10/2020
Sabrang / by Sabrangindia
While no birthday in jail can ever be ‘happy’, here’s how you honour the human rights defender on her special day.
Trade Unionist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj was among the five activists and human rights defenders rounded up by a vindictive regime in August 2018, as a part of a crackdown on dissenting voices. She was picked up in a second wave of arrests due to her alleged “maoist links” that somehow, according to the police, meant that she was a part of the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy!
It is noteworthy that Bharadwaj was neither an organiser of nor present in Pune during the Elgaar Parishad! If it sounds preposterous, it is because it is indeed utterly ludicrous!
On November 1, Bharadwaj will be spending her birthday behind bars for the third straight year. Here’s what you can do to make it ‘happy-ish’.
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On the occasion of, lawyer, activist and trade unionist, Sudha Bharadwaj’s birthday, watch this sabrangindia video where journalist and activist Teesta Setalvad talks about her work, the undemocratic nature of her arrest and the conditions of women activists in general, nationwide and globally.
Watch video (3:54min) here
By Sunni Students’ Federation India – SSF
en | 1h 05min | 2020
A Talk on ‘Vilifying Democratic Warriors – from Bhima Koregaon to Delhi Pogrom’
Adv. P V Surendranath (Senior Advocate-Supreme Court & Gen Secretary, All India Lawyers Union)
Watch video
WORLDCRUNCH / BY Laure Gautherin and Anne-Sophie Goninet
From Rosa Parks and Malala Yousafzai to Golda Meir and Corazon Aquino, women activists and political leaders have led the fight for gender equality and human rights around the world over the past century …
Sudha Bharadwaj (India): Law was not this mathematics student’s first love, but after seeing the working conditions of certain minorities in India, Sudha Bharadwaj’s pursuit of justice, as described by an editor of The Wire, led her to obtain a late law degree.
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