News Click / by Shoili Kanungo
When all relations are defined by oppression and subjugation, and human relationships vanish, the oppressor fears the future.
… Captive Imagination is Varavara Rao´s prison journal from the 1980´s. It is a manual of life infused with love, longing, and the power of dreams and imagination – which he says are the limbs that support every prisoner and cannot be taken away.
Read and see
Frontline / by Divya Trivedi
Overcrowded prisons across India have become fertile breeding grounds for the coronavirus.
As early as May, the International Legal Foundation, which has two decades of experience in protecting detainees impacted by infectious diseases, warned that it was not a question of if, but when, COVID-19 would overwhelm incarceration facilities.
Read more
The Hindu Business / by Shriya Mohan
For the families of political prisoners, daily life is an endless rigmarole of legal battles for the bail of their loved ones.
The pandemic and the resulting curfew on prison visits and postal delivery have exacerbated the isolation of political prisoners like GN Saibaba, Varavara Rao, Dr Kafeel Khan, Sudha Bharadwaj and others, cutting them off further from their families — the very people who are rooting for their innocence and freedom.
Read more
15/08/2020
Gauri Lankesh News / by K Satyanarayana
A popular public speaker with eloquent oration and elephantine memory is now reduced to searching for words, incoherent delirium.
Varavara Rao, 80-year old Telugu revolutionary poet, now incarcerated in Bhima Koregaon case and ailing in Nanavati Hospital, should not be left to die, as he is a symbol of people’s poetry, chronicler of people’s movements, upholder of popular democracy and rule of law, a teacher and a public speaker. One can gauge his popularity from the world-wide upsurge of expressions of protest against his imprisonment and solidarity with him, pouring in for the last ten days.
Read more
03/08/2020
Jurist / by Abhishek Chakravarty and Abhijit Rajkhowa
Barely a few months after news broke about a novel virus with the potential for a global pandemic, COVID-19 brought the entire world to a grinding halt … The virus has mercilessly affected all sections of our society whether rich or poor, young or old. Now the virus knocks at the door of a highly vulnerable group of people whose choices are limited – prisoners.
Read more
02/08/2020
Firstpost / by Parth MN
Anand Teltumbde’s family is anxiously awaiting his test results. The high court directed the state to inform the family on 1 August.
When Monali Raut spoke to her imprisoned brother Mahesh last week, it got her a bit worried. “He said almost half the prisoners in Taloja Central Prison have been suffering from flu, cough or cold in the past week,” she said.
Read more
The Print / by Aneesha Bedi
New Delhi: With poet Varavara Rao and activists Akhil Gogoi and Sharjeel Imam testing positive for Covid-19 inside crowded prisons, the cases have brought to the fore concerns about the safety of inmates and jail staff amid the Covid pandemic. Jails across the country are reporting increasing cases of the infection, and the situation appears to be alarming at some places.
Read more
India Legal / by Srishti Ojha
Even though international treaties and the apex court have batted for the right of prisoners to healthcare, recent cases have shown that governments will show no leniency when it comes to activists.
Read more
15/07/2020
BBC / by Geeta Pandey
On Wednesday, when he turns 70 in a Mumbai jail where he’s been imprisoned for 90 days, his family and friends are trying to ensure that he’s not greeted with silence.
Scores of letters and cards wishing him well on his birthday are expected to be delivered at Taloja jail where he’s being held.
Read more
The Indian Express / by Express News Service
Two days after writer-poet Varavara Rao (80), accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, tested positive for Covid-19, 20 other inmates of Taloja Central Jail, including Vernon Gonsalves (61), a co-accused in the case, have tested negative, prison officials said Saturday.
Read more
The Leaflet / by Indira Jaising
The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly held that imprisonment does not deprive a prisoner of other fundamental rights that can be exercised consistently with detention. This logic should apply with more force to undertrials and doubly during a pandemic.
Read more
The Leaflet / by Megha Katheria
From the senior activists and lawyers to younger activists like Safoora Zargar, the state has walked at turtle space in granting bail or even protecting the health of the political prisoners during a pandemic. The state of our prisons and the necessity to decongest them is well known. The author explores the democratic and constitutional implications on keeping political prisoners, with comorbidities, locked during a pandemic.
Read more
The Wire / by Varavara Rao
In November 2019, when the Bhima Koregaon accused were still housed in Yerawada Central Prison and their case had not yet been transferred to the NIA, the Telugu poet penned some thoughts about his experience there, and the carceral nature of the state.
Read more
08/06/2020
Bloomberg Quint / by Priya Ramani
“Read it not once, but many times,” says Mohammad Aamir Khan explaining the process clearly over the phone. “Each word has a story. Try to feel the pain behind each word.”
Khan, 39, should know. After he was “kidnapped” one night (he never uses the word arrested because he was snatched from the street, tortured, made to sign blank sheets of paper, and then produced in a court only a week later), Khan spent 14 years in prison, incarcerated for serious crimes he never committed, before being acquitted in 2012.
Read more