Our government shows a benign mask to the world behind which its fangs are bared against its own citizens, observes Aakar Patel.
'These charges of the prosecution will fall to the ground and I am 100 per cent sure of that.'
The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to poet and activist P Varavara Rao on medical grounds in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
Maharashtra police on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for suspected Maoist links. Near simultaneous searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi. Subsequently, Rao, Bhardwaj and Farreira were arrested. Although Navalakha was also arrested, the Delhi high court ordered police not to take him out of the national capital at least until Wednesday. According to unconfirmed reports, others whose residences were raided are Susan Abraham, Kranthi Tekula, Father Stan Swamy in Ranchi and Anand Teltumbde in Goa. The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year. Here are their brief profiles:
'With vendetta politics as its main plank, the BJP will be looking out for every opportunity to destabilise this Mahagatbandhan government.'
'Why potentially anybody, not only Muslims and Dalits, can be subjected to custodial death?'
Activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, has been shifted to the 'Anda Circle' (high-security barracks) in the Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai, his partner Sahba Husain said on Sunday and claimed the 70-year-old's already fragile health has deteriorated further due to shifting.
'I also stopped speaking to the media because I felt used by them.'
"We see no reason to interfere with the high court order," said a bench of Justices U U lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Trivedi, refusing to consider the submissions raised by the NIA which had moved the apex court against the December 1 order.
In the last ten years, 96 per cent of the sedition cases against 405 individuals pertained to making critical remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, points out Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
'If you persist in opposing the government, they set the ED or the NIA on you. And the courts have not given us much hope.'
Rashmi Shukla's testimony comes as a revelation because the proceedings of the Elgar Parishad form the basis of the Bhima Koregaon case which has become an international cause celebre.
This senior cop who deposed in such detail about the Elgar Parishad, however, claimed to know nothing about the opposition to it from organisations such as Milind Ekbote's Samastha Hindu Aghadi as well as Pune's then Mayor Mukta Tilak.
The Indian State's arbitrariness may have come to be accepted with resignation within the country, but when it behaves in the same manner with external players, it gets a push-back, observes T N Ninan.
Despite Sharad Pawar's categorical stand, the Maharashtra government has done nothing to ease the suffering of the Bhima Koregaon 16, who have been denied their basic rights to health and to communication with their families while in jail.
'That is how our machinery operates and sees every prisoner.'
'Anybody and everybody who opposes this government for whatever reasons will be branded a terrorist and charged in such a manner that all human rights will be taken away.'
Since 2014, India has left its moorings as a pluralist, modern, secular State because that is how the BJP wants it to be, notes Aakar Patel.
Do Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray, Sanjay Raut, and Sharad Pawar want the deaths of the Bhima Koregaon accused to be associated with their regime? asks Jyoti Punwani.
She has been in custody as an undertrial since her arrest in 2018.
'The BJP's modus operandi is not just to be intolerant of dissent, it is to create mistrust and doubt between communities and the electoral process itself.'
Testimony presented before the Bhima Korgaon Commission over the last two months reveals the background to the violence that broke out on January 1, 2018.
Teltumbde later termed the police's case against him and several other social activists as 'harassment' and a ploy to 'humiliate' them.
'At this age we all know that death is inevitable, but everyone wants to die with dignity.' 'The judges have given the answer.'
Varavara Rao reached home in Hyderabad on Thursday morning, while activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, were sent to Mumbai by road.
The apex court questioning the police about the arrests said that 'dissent is the safety valve of democracy and if you don't allow these safety valves, it will burst.'
Pune police on Tuesday raided homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them -- poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and Chhattisgarh and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in Delhi.
The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year.
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