UAPA – free them all

Celebration to Incarceration: The Bhima-Koregaon Case So Far

17/09/2025 Asha

Outlook / by Pritha Vashisth

What began in 2018 as a commemoration of anti-caste resistance turned into an eight-year-long legal ordeal, with 16 lawyers, poets, professors and activists jailed under anti-terror laws—many without trial, and some still behind bars today
Summary
◦ The Bhima-Koregaon event in 2018, a Dalit-led commemoration, was followed by violence—leading to the arrest of 16 activists, academics, and lawyers.
◦ All accused were charged under the harsh UAPA law, allowing long detentions without evidence or trial—Fr Stan Swamy died in custody.
◦ Eight of the 16 have been granted bail, but some remain jailed as courts have not yet ruled on their discharge petitions.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Why caste Hindutva, not an Elgar conspiracy, is at the root of the Bhima Koregaon violence (The Polis Project / Feb 2025)

▪ Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)

▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India

Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
Read more / order
▪ Book Excerpt: The story of an ‘Urban Naxal’ (Deccan Herald | by Alpa Shah | April 2024 )

Supreme Court grants six-week interim medical bail to Mahesh Raut

16/09/2025 Asha

Supreme Court grants six-week interim medical bail to Bhima Koregaon accused Mahesh Raut

17/09/2025

Sabrangindia / by Sabrangindia

Raut, in jail since 2018 under UAPA, secures interim relief for rheumatoid arthritis treatment; despite being granted regular bail by Bombay High Court in 2023, he remains in custody as the order has been under Supreme Court stay for two years
The Supreme Court on Monday, September 16, 2025, granted six weeks’ interim medical bail to Mahesh Raut, one of the accused in the Bhima Koregaon–Elgar Parishad case, who has been in custody since his arrest in June 2018 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA).

Court proceedings
A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Satish Chandra Sharma passed the order after Raut moved the Court citing serious health concerns.
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SC Grants Interim Bail To Mahesh Raut On Medical Grounds For Six Weeks, Jyoti Jagtap’s Bail Plea To Be Heard In October

16/09/2025

The Commune / by The Commune

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (16 September 2025) granted interim bail on medical grounds for a period of six weeks to Bhima Koregaon–Elgar Parishad case accused Mahesh Raut, who has been under custody since June 2018 after being arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, over alleged Maoist links.
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Supreme Court Grants Interim Bail To Mahesh Raut On Medical Grounds For 6 Weeks

16/09/2025

Live Law / by Gursimran Kaur Bakshi

The Supreme Court today (September 16) granted interim bail on medical grounds for a period of 6 weeks to Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case accused Mahesh Raut, arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, over alleged Maoist links. He has been in custody since his arrest in June 2018.
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Also read:
▪ Supreme Court To Hear Activist Mahesh Raut’s Bail Plea (Outlook / Sep 2025)
▪ Notes From Inside Taloja Prison (Outlook | by Mahesh Raut | Jun 2025)
▪ Year after being granted bail, Mahesh Raut remains in jail as stay extended (The Indian Express / Sep 2024)
▪ ‘Ominous portents’: Why High Court staying its own bail orders in Bhima Koregaon case is troubling (Scroll.in / Dec 2023)
▪ Bhima Koregaon Case: Mahesh Raut, youngest accused, granted bail by the Bombay HC! (SabrangIndia / Sep 2023)

Ongoing detention of activists without bail, criminalisation of dissent and ban on books

08/09/2025 Asha

monitor.civicus.org / by CIVICUS

India’s civic space is rated as ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. Even as the country celebrated its 79th Independence Day on 15th August 2025, the government continued to target activists and civil society organisations by misusing draconian anti-terror and sedition laws to silence dissent. Laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) are used to keep activists and academics behind bars and to fabricate charges against those critical of the government and its polarising, discriminative and anti-poor policies.
…
BK-16 activists detained for years continue to seek bail
Academic and anti-caste activist Hany Babu was due to appear before the Bombay High Court seeking regular (indefinite) bail on 12th August 2025 after his request was approved by the Supreme Court on 16th July 2025. However, his bail hearing has been delayed without prior notice until 8th September 2025. He has spent more than 5 years in jail awaiting trial.
Hany Babu, who has been held in pre-trial detention since his formal arrest on 28 July 2020, has applied for bail on at least five separate occasions, including medical bail, but has yet to be approved.
Read more

Also read:
▪ India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS /Jul 2024)
▪ Civic Freedoms in India ‘Repressed’: Global Monitor Civicus (The Wire / Mar 2023)

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

22/08/2025 Asha

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.
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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)

Stan Swamy Lecture Cancelled – A Case Study in India’s Shrinking Space for Dissent

17/08/2025 Asha

The Print / by Ranjan Solomon

St. Xavier’s bowed to ABVP pressure, cancelling a memorial for the late Jesuit activist, exposing the deepening crisis of free speech and academic courage in India.
The cancellation of the Stan Swamy Memorial lecture and the weaponisation of allegations, truth is obfuscated.
Read more

Also read:
▪ “Sorry, Stan!” (Countercurrents / Aug 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)

▪ Video: Testimony of Stan Swamy, two days before his arrest on 8 October 2020.

en | 7:48 min | Oct 6, 2020
Watch video

When Najeeb meets Watali – On the statutory restrictions on grant of bail under UAPA

07/08/2025 Asha

Constitutional Law and Philosophy / by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling

This is a guest post by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling, who have been detained in prison as “undertrials” since 2020 and 2018, respectively. This piece is being published here simultaneously with The Proof of Guilt blog.

The judgement in the case of (2019) 5 SCC 1 [“Watali] was delivered by the Supreme Court on 02.04.2019. Ever since then, procuring bail for a person accused of an offence under Chapters IV or VI of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) has been, to borrow an illustrative simile used by Abhinav Sekhri, like asking a person to swim after throwing him in deep water with both his hands tied behind him.
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Also read:
▪ The Grammar of the Power to Arrest and Search under UAPA (Constitutional Law and Philosophy | by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling | Jul 2025)
▪ How Long is Too Long? – On the Maximum Period that an Undertrial Prisoner can be Detained (Constitutional Law and Philosophy | by Hany Babu and Surendra Gadling | Oct 2024)
▪ Why the SC Judgment Granting Bail to Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira Is So Significant (The Wire / Jul 2023)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report

The Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill Perpetuates India’s Banning Regime

01/08/2025 Asha

The Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill Perpetuates India’s Banning Regime

01/08/2025

The Wire / by Harish Dhawan and Paramjeet Singh

The Bill strikes at the heart of the fundamental right to association.
The Maharashtra assembly has passed the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill (MSPSB), making it the latest addition to a growing arsenal of banning legislations that cloak sweeping state power to curb the fundamental right to freedom of association with the language of security.
From its title to its objective and provisions, the Bill is shrouded in layers of ambiguity.
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Insecurity By Law: A Critique of the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill in the Context of India’s Banning Regime

July 2025

PUDR / by People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)

The Maharashtra Bill, which has been designed specifically to target the ‘spread of Naxalism in urban areas,’ as evident in its ‘Object and Reasons’, is an offshoot of a popular narrative, a social media hashtag- the ‘Urban Naxal’, popularised by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri.
…
Particularly in the wake of Elgar Parishad in 2017, the term became a common political lexicon used to describe anti-establishment protesters and dissenting voices. The term ‘Urban Naxal’ formed the backstory for the FIR filed against the people implicated for the Bhima Koregaon case, it even became a synonym for the case itself.
Read full report

Also read:
▪ Maharashtra’s Urban Naxal Bill and its New War on Civil Society – Criminalizing Dissent (Countercurrents / Jul 2025)
▪ As Maharashtra Govt Brings Bill Against ‘Urban Naxalism’, Activists Fear Criminalisation of Dissent (The Wire / Jul 2025)
▪ Maharashtra Assembly passes bill to curb ‘left-wing extremism‘ (Scroll.in / Jul 2025)
▪ Maharashtra: Top Cop Accuses Decades-Old Cultural, Rights Orgs of Working as ‘Naxal Fronts’ (The Wire / Feb 2022)

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.
Read more

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)

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)

Congress has a UAPAwakening: Law parent cries ‘dangerous misuse’ / The Opposition’s Silence

11/06/2025 Asha

Congress has a UAPAwakening: Law parent cries ‘dangerous misuse’

12/06/2025

The Telegraph / by Pheroze L. Vincent

Khera mentioned the Bhima Koregaon case, the Delhi riots conspiracy, and the action on web portal NewsClick and other instances of journalists and activists facing arrest under the UAPA
The Congress on Wednesday skewered the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, alleging that the Narendra Modi government had weaponised it to stifle dissent and deny justice, but in the process starkly bared the irony that the party had itself passed the law and inserted the provisions that it now finds “draconian” and vulnerable to “dangerous misuse”.
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Modi govt using laws like UAPA to stifle dissent: Congress

11/06/2025

Deccan Herald / by PTI

Anand Teltumbde, Nodeep Kaur, and Mahesh Raut were arrested under UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case
The Congress on Wednesday accused the Modi government of stifling dissent and said the “dangerous misuse” of laws like the UAPA to threaten free expression is part of the BJP’s broader attack on the Constitution.
“Under the Modi government, law has increasingly been used to stifle dissent and delay justice. Between 2014 and 2022, 8,719 UAPA cases yielded only a 2.55% conviction rate, exposing its misuse to target critics, students, journalists, and activists,” Congress’ media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said in a post on X.
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The Opposition’s Silence Has Let the BJP Diminish India’s Political Discourse

06/06/2025

The Wire / by Sarayu Pani

Today, the opposition faces a choice – they can either continue to allow the boundaries of political engagement in the country to be decided by the ruling party or they can ground their opposition in democratic principles.
… A vast majority of these instances have not been rhetorically resisted by the political opposition to the BJP. In 2019, for example, the Congress voted in favour of amendments that dangerously broadened the scope of the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in the Rajya Sabha. Few opposition political parties have stood in clear solidarity with the detainees of either the Bhima Koregaon case or the Delhi riots conspiracy case.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Maharashtra’s redrafted Public Security Bill narrows scope — but concerns about suppression of dissent persist (CJP / June 2025)
▪ India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS / Jul 2024)
▪ UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR – Study of UAPA Abuse in India, 2009-2022 (PUCL / Sep 2022). Download report
▪ India’s Hindu Nationalist Project Relies on Brutal Repression (Jacobinmag / April 2021)
▪ A Dalit trade union activist and her fight for equal rights: A profile of Nodeep Kaur (The Polis Project / March 2021)