urban maoists/naxals – free them all

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)

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)

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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Elgar Parishad case accused at event that attacked Maharashtra Public Security Bill

22/05/2025 Asha

Elgar Parishad case accused at event that attacked Maharashtra Public Security Bill, cops to seek bail review

22/05/2025

Times of India / by Soumitra Bose

The Elgar Parishad case accused, who are out on bail, had thronged the Veera Sathidar memorial event at Vidarbha Hindi Sahitya Sammelan on May 13, top security sources told TOI.
Though the event was organised as a memorial for the acclaimed filmmaker, security agency sources stated it turned into a platform for attacking the Maharashtra govt’s efforts to table the proposed Maharashtra Public Security Bill to rein in frontal organisations of alleged urban Maoists.
… Activists like Sudhir Dhawale and former Nagpur University professor Soma Sen, who are out on bail in the Elgar Parishad case, participated in the event
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Actor’s wife, 2 others booked for reciting Pak poet’s poem

21/05/2025

Rediff.com / by pti, edited by Hemant Waje

The recitation of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge poem at an event in Nagpur has led police to slap charges of endangering India’s unity and integrity, and promoting enmity against three persons, including late actor-activist Veera Sathidar’s wife Pushpa.
… Police said they are also looking into the activities and background of the Samata Kala Manch, whose head, Sudhir Dhawale, is currently out on bail in connection with another case related to alleged inflammatory speeches made during the Elgar Parishad event in Pune in 2017.
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Singing Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ is ‘Sedition’: Nagpur Police Book Organisers of Vira Sathidar Memorial

19/05/2025

The Wire / by Sukanyana Shantha

Singing the revolutionary poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, once celebrated as a voice of resistance, now attracts sedition charges in India.
At an event organised last week in memory of actor and activist Vira Sathidar, a group of young cultural activists sang the lyrics of Faiz’s famous Hum Dekhenge.
… In October 2020, when the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Elgar Parishad case, Sathidar’s name appeared among the so-called “urban Naxals,” a term loosely used by the Devendra Fadnavis-led government to target dissenters. Now, with the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, the state government seeks to formalise the term “urban Naxal” within the legal framework.
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Also read:
▪ Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order] (Sabrangindia / Jan 2025)
▪ Former professor Shoma Sen released from prison (Scroll.in / Apr 2024)
▪ 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)

Rationality seems upside down: ‘Intellectuals’ who endorse state violence!

05/04/2025 Asha

South First / by N Venugopal

The rationality that the Telugu society cultivated 50 years ago—rejecting state oppression and embracing humanistic values—now seems to have been turned upside down.
When an ordinary citizen commits murder, it is a punishable offense. But if the government itself, through the home minister, announcing deadlines for killing people, is that not a crime? And when so-called intellectuals clap and cheer for these murders, is that not a crime too?
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Also read:
▪ Condemn the NIA’s raid in Andhra-Telangana to suppress democratic voices critical of war of corporate plunder ( Countercurrents / Oct 2023)
▪ AI Report: India’s exploitation of terrorism financing assessments to target the civil society (Amnesty.org / Sep 2023)
▪ The cost of protesting against mining in Gadchiroli (Scroll.in | by Nolina Minj | Sep 27, 2023)
▪ How Varavara Rao shaped Telangana’s sociopolitics: N Venugopal Rao interview (The Federal / Aug 2023)
▪ Statement against the drone bomb attacks in Chhattisgarh, India (India Matters / April 2023)

Conjuring the BK16 Myth: How the Elgar Parishad case rests on fiction and deception

21/03/2025 Asha

Dispatches: A Conversation on unravelling the Elgar Parishad / Bhima Koregaon case with Prashant Rahi, Mouli Sharma and Arshu John

By The Polis Project / @project_polis

With Prashant Rahi, Mouli Sharma and Arshu John
By The Polis Project / @project_polis
en | 49min | 2025
Listen to the recording on X Spaces Live

Conjuring the BK16 Myth: How the Elgar Parishad case rests on fiction and deception

21/03/2025

The Polis Project / by Prashant Rahi and Mouli Sharma

This is the second report in a three-part investigative series on the Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon case. Read part one here.
Three months after a Hindutva mob attacked a peaceful gathering of Dalit-Bahujan men, women, and children, a cabal from the Pune Urban Police mounted a bizarre prosecution, holding 16 eminent human rights defenders (HRDs) responsible for the Elgar Parishad, an anti-caste event held in the city, a day before. The infamous case has, however, come to draw its name less from the event, and more from the calamitous gathering that assembled on both sides of the river Bhima, on 1st January 2018, to pay homage to an obelisk-shaped martyrs’ column, at Perne Phata, opposite the village of Koregaon. In the months that followed, the HRDs were imprisoned in waves of arrests across the country, with no evidence so far linking them to the mob violence.
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)
▪ THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES (THE POLIS PROJECT / JUNE 2024-March 2025)
▪ My 7 years in Anda cell were the most inhuman form of solitary confinement: Prashant Rahi (rediff.com / Mar 2024)
▪ The Bhima Koregaon Arrests and the Resistance in India (Monthly Review / Apr 2022)

Fadnavis’ obsession with ‘urban naxals’, and a lawless Beed

28/12/2024 Asha

National Herald / by Navin Kumar

Several observers believe that the BJP government anticipates a number of popular unrests in the state in the coming months and is gearing up to deal with people’s anger
… It was during Fadnavis’s last tenure as chief minister that the Maharashtra police initiated the infamous Bhima-Koregaon conspiracy case. Though the case is crumbling in court, it enabled the police to arrest a large number of human rights activists including Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde in addition to Father Stan Swamy (who died in prison), Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Vernon Gonsalves and Prof. Shoma Sen. Activists and civil society believe Fadnavis is setting the stage for a sequel.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Is Devendra Fadnavis planning another crackdown like Bhima-Koregaon? (National Herald / Dec 2024)
▪ Maharashtra re-introduces Bill to curb ‘urban Naxals’ (Rediff.com / Dec 2024)
▪ A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism (The Wire / Jul 2024)
▪ Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired.com / June 2022)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)
▪ Transfer of Bhima-Koregaon case to NIA appropriate: Devendra Fadnavis (Deccan Herald / Jan 2020)

Is Devendra Fadnavis planning another crackdown like Bhima-Koregaon?

21/12/2024 Asha

Is Devendra Fadnavis planning another crackdown like Bhima-Koregaon?

21/12/2024

National Herald / by AJ Prabal

Why would the Maharashtra chief minister require a new law to deal with alleged ‘urban Naxals’?
One of the first acts of Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has been to introduce a special legislation to deal with ‘urban Naxals’ in the state.
… Recalling the Bhima-Koregaon case lodged in 2018 when Fadnavis was once again chief minister, Yadav suspected that Maharashtra Police could be planning a similar crackdown on political rivals and activists.
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Fadnavis won’t be called for deposing before Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry

19/12/2024

The Indian Express / by Chandan Haygunde

Prakash Ambedkar had submitted a letter in June 2023 to the commission demanding deposition of Fadnavis, Mallick and Suvez Haque, the then superintendent of police, Pune Rural, as witness in connection with the ongoing inquiry into the Koregaon Bhima violence.
The Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry, which is probing into the causes of violence reported in Koregaon Bhima area in Pune district on January 1, 2018, has decided not to call Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for deposing as a witness.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Maharashtra re-introduces Bill to curb ‘urban Naxals’ (Rediff.com / Dec 2024)
▪ A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism (The Wire / Jul 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)
▪ Transfer of Bhima-Koregaon case to NIA appropriate: Devendra Fadnavis (Deccan Herald / Jan 2020)

Urban Naxal Bogey: Move for Harsher Bill to Curb Civil Rights?

13/12/2024 Asha

The Wire / P. Raman

The government will find it difficult to run roughshod on sensitive issues such as this because of a rejuvenated Opposition and the need for allies’ consent.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacks “urban Naxals”, it surprises many. For it was just this August – less than four months ago – that home minister Amit Shah had declared that the war on Naxalites was nearing its end and left-wing extremism in the country would be wiped out by March 2026.
If the war is in the mopping-up stage, why has Modi intensified his rant? Consider his relentless attacks on extremists and their presumed urban supporters in recent months.
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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)
▪ From ‘tukde tukde gang’ to ‘urban Naxal’: How media trials enable the government to stifle dissent (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)
▪ From Anti-National to Urban Naxal: The Trajectory of Dissent in India – How the term Urban Naxal came to being (Newsclick / Sep 2018)

McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey!

17/07/2024 Asha

McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey!

17/07/2024

The Crossbill / by Subbhash Gatade

Does the ruling dispensation feels that since Naxals are seen as violent gangs who claim to work for people this bogey of Urban Naxal facilitates it to target anyone who refuses to play ball.

1. ‘India Will Awake to Police Raj’!
““I am reminded of Pandit Nehru ‘s speech “At the stroke of midnight India will awake to freedom.” At the stroke of midnight night 1st July 2024 India will awake to police raj,”
There are rare occasions when a simple tweet underlines the unfolding reality in stark terms.

… Any concerned citizen can look dispassionately at the Bhima Koregaon Case (12) or the way the accused in the NE Delhi riots have been languishing in jail – and are not even getting bail – and infer where things have reached.
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A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism

15/07/2024

The Wire / by Ajay K. Mehra

The proposed legislation will authorise state police and other security agencies to arrest an accused person without warrant and by extension, without letting them know of their offence.
As soon as the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024, tabled in the state legislative assembly on July 11 this year, becomes a law, the state government will have another draconian legal instrument to use against protesters, dissenters, critics and opponents. Like other such laws, this one too has strict provisions making an individual’s arrest non-bailable.
Since the need for such a law is being justified on the grounds that the “menace of Naxalism is increasing in urban areas… through Naxal frontal organisations”, dissenters being framed up as ‘urban Naxals’ is imminent.
Read more

Also read:
▪ What is Maharashtra’s new Bill to curb ‘Naxalism in urban areas’? (The Indian Express / Jul 2024)
▪ Footwear allegedly hurled at Modi’s convoy raises serious questions (The Caravan / June 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)
▪ What makes an Urban Naxal? (MR online / Sep 2018)
▪ From ‘tukde tukde gang’ to ‘urban Naxal’: How media trials enable the government to stifle dissent (Scroll.in / Sep 2018)