Free Press Journal / by Bhavna Uchil
Social activists Varavara Rao and Shoma Sen, on Friday, filed pleas seeking temporary bail before a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court.
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All the people who are the focus of this blog have been accused of being associated with what has come to be known as the “Bhima-Koregaon” or “Elgar Parishad” case.
To mark the bi-centenary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon in 2018, more than 200 Dalit, Bahujan, Ambedkarite and other organisations came together. The coalition organised the hugely successful and massively attended event, ‘Elgar Parishad’ (loud declaration committee), on December 31, 2017 in Shaniwarwada in Pune, once the seat of Peshwai power. This event, as per the organisers, was organised to expose the Navi Peshwai — an era of increasing repression on movements, alienation of minorities, increasing caste atrocities, anti-poor development policies and more.
● That they had made inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad.
● That they are acting on behalf of, or are members of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoists).
● That they were plotting to assassinate the Prime Minister.
As it turns out, most of those arrested were not even at the Elgar Parishad event, the charges about the links to Maoists entirely shown to be based on fabricated evidence and so far the charges about the assassination plot had not even a single piece of evidence produced.
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en | 3:06 min | 2020
Leaders of CPIML, CPI(M), CPI, AIFB, RSP, RJD, LJD and VCK have written a Joint Opposition Memorandum to the President of India demanding an end to the ongoing witch-hunt and release of all political prisoners in view of their enhanced health risk and to wage a united fight against Covid19.
Watch video
11 May 2020
Release all political prisoners-
Dissenting Voices
Activists of Peoples Movements
and Opposition leaders
End Overcrowding in India’s Jails
Read full statement below
Newsclick / by Subhash Gatade
The Supreme Court also wants to reduce the Covid-19 risks posed by overcrowded jails, but there is little progress so far.
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The Quint / by People’s Union for Democratcic Rights
PUDR expresses apprehensions over the health status of Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha who surrendered before the NIA in Mumbai and Delhi respectively on 14 April 2020. Both are implicated in the Bhima Koregaon case of January 2018 in which eleven human rights defenders have been arrested.
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The Hindu / by Sonam Saigal
Activists age, health issues put them at high risk amid pandemic, says centre.
The American Bar Association’s (ABA)’s Center for Human Rights has called for the release of all human rights defenders arrested in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case in the interest of flattening the COVID-19 curve, upholding the fundamental rights of detainees and enhancing national security, as their detention was arbitrary.
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Also read: American Bar Association’s report (Oct 2019)
The Preliminary Fair Trial Report: Bhima Koregaon
By Concerned Citizens / #NoJailDuringCovid
This appeal is being written to highlight how the activists, lawyers and teachers arrested in what has now come to be known as the Bhima Koregaon/ Elgaar Parishad case should be released keeping in mind the direction of United Nations and to highlight that their release can’t be any harm to the society or danger to the legal procedures.
Read more & sign online petition
The Guardian / by Priyamvada Gopal and Salil Tripathi
Journalists, intellectuals and dissidents are being threatened by Modi’s government.
As a lethal virus scorches its way across continents, the leftwing Indian rights campaigner Gautam Navlakha has been reminding us of the words of Leonard Cohen, urging people to speak up for the right things: “There is a crack/a crack in everything, that’s how light gets in.” While many of us experience lockdown in varying degrees of constraint, Navlakha – who cited Cohen’s lyrics in a recent statement – faces actual incarceration as does another high-profile Indian, the eminent academic and Dalit intellectual Prof Anand Teltumbde.
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Asiaville / by Asiaville Desk
As the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic looms large and prisons are potentially becoming dangerous hotspots of contagion, 40 eminent poets from across India have penned an open letter to the Prime Minister of India seeking urgent release of celebrated octogenarian Telugu poet Varavara Rao.
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Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff
Meanwhile, the petitioners in the case wrote an open letter to the CJI, alleging that the prosecution had produced no evidence even after 18 months.
Several Dalit leaders, including MPs and MLAs, issued a statement on Monday calling the imminent arrest of activist Anand Teltumbde in the Bhima Koregaon case a “national shame”.
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The Wire / by The Wire Staff
‘Like all fair-minded citizens, we are shocked that the prosecution has not been held accountable to the spirit of the law.’
New Delhi: As the Supreme Court’s one-week period to surrender comes to an end on April 14, the arrest of social activists and intellectuals Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha in the Elgar Parishad case is now inevitable. The two, if arrested, will join the nine other human rights activists and lawyers languishing in Maharashtra’s jails for close to two years.
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