People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) welcomes the Supreme Court order granting bail on merits and release of Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, two of the accused in the infamous Bhima Koregaon case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). In a significant judgement, on 28 July 2023, the top court granted bail for two primary reasons: the fact that[Read More…]
Without bail, without charges being framed, without justice! Release all 15-surviving accused in the Bhima Koregaon case. June 6, 2023 will mark five years that five activists are behind bars. They include Mahesh Raut, an anti-displacement campaigner, Rona Wilson, a political prisoners’ campaigner, Shoma Sen, a feminist activist and professor, Sudhir Dhawale, a Dalit rights activist and Surendra Gadling, a[Read More…]
Today, 14 April 2023 marks four years, seven months and eighteen days since Gautam Navlakha’s arrest on 28 August 2018. A well-known human rights activist, respected journalist and writer of long standing, Gautam has now been incarcerated for three years since 14 April 2020 when he surrendered at the NIA office in Delhi. Gautam went to jail when the pandemic[Read More…]
PUDR strongly condemns the arrest of Irfan Mehraj, a Srinagar-based freelance journalist and researcher under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on 20 March 2023 by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the so-called ‘NGO Terror funding Case’ of October 2020. Irfan’s arrest is deeply condemnable as it shows the unrelenting executive crackdown on the valley’s scribes in the[Read More…]
People’s Union for Democratic Rights welcomes the findings of the report submitted by the District and Sessions Judge, Faridabad into the illegal detention and brutal torture of labour rights activist, Shiv Kumar in January 2021 by the Haryana Police. Part of the findings ordered by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the petition filed by Shiv Kumar’s father in[Read More…]
Jailed under-trial leader Altaf Ahmad Shah (66) is dead. His death does not come as a surprise. By the time Mr Shah was diagnosed with advanced renal cancer on 30th September at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RMLA) and shifted to AIIMS on 5th evening, it was already too late. The doctors at AIIMS could not begin treatment because Mr. Shah[Read More…]
On 8th September Vernon Gonsalves, one of the 16 undertrials in the Bhima Koregaon case lodged in the anda cell of Taloja Central Jail, was diagnosed with dengue and likely pneumonia. Gonsalves age 65, had been suffering from fever since 30th August, but it took an appeal from his lawyer and the intervention of the Court for the Taloja Jail[Read More…]
The controversial garlanding of the recently released 11 individuals by members allegedly belonging to the VHP on August 16, 2022, raises a pertinent question: why were these individuals released? Obviously, the fact that they had been in prison for well over the mandatory 14 years made them eligible for availing the remission policy of the state government. It is a[Read More…]
Tomorrow, 14th April 2022 marks the completion of two years of PUDR activist Gautam Navlakha’s surrender before the NIA. One of sixteen accused in the infamous Bhima Koregaon case, Gautam has been imprisoned in Taloja Central Jail, Navi Mumbai since 25 May 2020. For more than six months now, since 12 October 2021, the nearly 70 years old Gautam, an[Read More…]
The recent arrest of Fahad Shah, editor of Kashmir Walla, under S 13 of UAPA and S 124 A and 505 of IPC for ‘uploading anti-national content’ raises a debate about the fate of journalism in times of conflict. Shah was arrested as he had uploaded Inayat Ahmad Mir’s family’s protest over the police’s claim that Mir was a “hybrid[Read More…]
The invocation of UAPA charges against members of a fact-finding team shortly after they released its findings on the communal violence in Tripura, is shocking and condemnable. Besides S. 13 of UAPA (punishment for ‘unlawful activity’), a slew of IPC offences has also been invoked: 153 A and B of IPC (promoting enmity and anti-national activities), 120 B, 503, 504[Read More…]
The high handedness of the Taloja Central Jail administration was evident in the events leading to the death of the octogenarian Bhima Koregaon undertrail, Stan Swamy on July 5, 2021. Almost immediately, the remaining BK undertrials protested the arbitrary jail conditions imposed by the then Superintendent, Kaustabh Kurlekar by observing a one-day hunger strike. However, far from bringing such persecution[Read More…]
PUDR’s report, Framed to Die: The Case of Stan Swamy, offers an exhaustive account of what lay behind Stan Swamy’s death in judicial custody in a private hospital on 5 July 2021. As is known, he was arrested from his room in Bagaicha ATC campus on 8 October 2020 under S. 120 B, 121 A, 124 A and 34 of[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the Haryana Government and the Police for filing cases against farmers protesting against the three farmers and Electricity Act. As per various news reports, Haryana Police have registered cases at Sadar Ambala PS, Baldev Nagar Ambala PS and Dabwali PS against Bhartiya Kisan Union and other farmers’ organizations for allegedly breaking police checkpoints and entering Haryana during the[Read More…]
People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) salutes the life and activism of Professor S. Seshaiah who succumbed to Covid 19 on October 10, 2020 at Anantapur, Telangana. Professor Seshaiah began his active participation in politics from his student days in the 1970s and he was the State Joint Secretary of the Radical Students Union of Prakasam district of the then[Read More…]
About eighty days after the riots that convulsed NE Delhi, what is the status of the investigation into the ‘over 700’ FIRs reportedly registered, according to the Home Minister’s statement in Parliament on 11 March, two months ago? If recent media reportage of the investigation and prosecution in the riots related cases is to be followed, the impression conveyed is[Read More…]
People’s Union for Democratic Rights(PUDR) today released its report on deaths of workers in Delhi while cleaning sewers/septic tanks over the last two years, titled “Chronic ‘Accidents’: Deaths of Sewer/Septic Tank Workers, Delhi, 2017-2019.” The release marks the occasion of the declared ‘target’ year for the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (campaign) on 2 October 2019, coinciding with the 150th birth anniversary[Read More…]
At the stroke of the midnight hour on 5 August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir was blanketed in a state of siege. 35,000 fresh troops in addition to the existing 6.5 lakhs were present with orders to shoot, curfew, internet and phone shut down, media black out, and all major elected leaders under house arrest. Already, there was escalated aggression over[Read More…]
PUDR draws attention to the illegality behind the decision of the Central Government-ruled Jammu and Kashmir to ban Jamaat-e-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir on February 28, 2019. While attention has been focussed on the escalation and de-escalation of tension between India-Pakistan, the Central Government has intensified repression in the[Read More…]
PUDR protests the illegal arrest of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti member Lingaraj Azad, who has been at the forefront of the peoples struggle against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills, and the continuing repression against the people through routine detention of NSS leaders, security camps, patrolling and raids on villages. Lingaraj Azad was detained and arrested on 6 March in Lanjigarh[Read More…]
People’s Union for Democratic Rights expresses outrage over the terrorist attack in Pulwama which killed over 40 CRPF personnel on February 14, 2019 and expresses condolences to the families of the deceased. However, the aftermath of Pulwama has shown rising attacks on Kashmiris in different states, a situation which is extremely worrisome and dangerous, despite a notification advisory by the[Read More…]
PUDR strongly condemns the abduction and slaying of one constable and two Special Police Officers (SPOs) by unidentified militants in the Shopian district of Kashmir.The deceased identified as Nisar Ahmad Dhobi (aged 38), Firdous Ahmad Kuchey (aged 28) and Kulwant Singh (aged 35), were picked up from their homes in Batgund and Kapren villages on the morning of 21 September,[Read More…]
A 34-year-old ‘techie’ Abhay Devdas Nayak was abducted by the Chattisgarh police on 31 May 2018 from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and presented before the media on 12 June, as a “top Maoist propagandist.” That he could be picked up by the police and kept in illegal custody and then shown as ‘arrested’ after a gap of 12 days,[Read More…]
On May 30, 2018, the Jammu and Kashmir Police filed a status report before the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Srinagar regarding the case of sexual favours that Major Gogoi of 53 Rashtriya Rifles sought from a local Kashmiri woman, on May 23, 2018. The police claimed that it was a case of ‘consenting adults’ as the woman[Read More…]
The killings of at least 37 Maoists by the combined force of the CRPF and the C-60, the elite unit of the Gadchiroli Police, on 22nd and 23rd April 2018 raises some very disturbing questions about the state’s methods of conducting ‘encounters’. In the morning of 22nd April, 64 police and paramilitary personnel gunned down 16 Maoists in Karnasur jungle[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the arrest of anti-displacement activist and founder member of “Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan” (VVJVA) Damodar Turi, on February 15, 2018 at Ranchi, an hour after the “Loktantra Bachao Manch” (Save Democracy Forum) organized meeting had ended. He was not shown a warrant for his arrest and was presented before the Giridih Court next day and sent to[Read More…]
PUDR CONDEMNS INSTITUTIONAL MURDER AND GANGRAPE OF A MINOR DALIT GIRL BY SECURITY FORCES IN KUNDULI, ODISHA DEMANDS PROPER INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION PUDR grieves and rages at the suicide of the young girl from Kunduli, Koraput district on 22 January 2018, who succumbed to the failure of the State to guarantee justice and to secure the freedom of its citizens. On 10 October[Read More…]
People’s Union for Democratic Rights has long been drawing attention to egregious violation of rights of workers governed under various labour laws. Most important of these rights is the fundamental right to form trade union, so as to engage in collective wage negotiations and to ensure that conditions on shop floor do not become tyrannical. Ever since the economic reforms[Read More…]
Peoples Union for Democratic Rights strongly condemns the imposition of the National Security Act (NSA) against Bhim Army’s founder leader Chandrashekhar Azad by Yogi Adityanath’s government, on 3 November 2017, a day after he was granted bail by Allahabad High Court. Chandrashekhar had been arrested on 8 June 2017 on charges of inciting violence and destruction of property, in connection[Read More…]
31 October 2017 – thirty three years have passed since the anti-Sikh pogrom carried out in Delhi between 31st October and 4th November 1984, following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh body guards. The official figure of those massacred in the violence stands at 2700, while according to unofficial estimates it is closer to 4000 in[Read More…]
As the Hadiya-Shefin matter comes up for hearing today, PUDR urges the Apex court to take note of the serious violation of democratic rights of the parties involved in this so-called case of ‘Love-Jihad’. PUDR believes that the case is being used in order to provide legitimacy to the supposed presence of ‘Love-Jihad’ or ‘terror marriages following conversion to Islam’[Read More…]
On 5th May 2017, an incident of attack on Dalits by the Rajputs occurred in the village Shabbirpur, located near Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. During the attack a youth from the Rajput community died, 13 Dalits were grievously injured, more than 40 Dalit houses were burnt, some of their shops looted and burnt. The incident was widely reported in the media[Read More…]
News reports of 27.07.2017 state that an Armed Forces Tribunal has suspended the life sentences awarded by a General Court Martial in 2014 and which were confirmed in 2015, to five army personnel for the killings of three Kashmiri civilians in April 2010, at Machil. The reason for suspension rests on presentation of ‘facts’ which have allegedly broken the chain[Read More…]
President of India, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee rejected five more mercy petitions between 25th and 26th May, 2017. With his current rejections, he has achieved 42 rejections and seven acceptances of mercy petitions during his tenure. There has been marked increase in rejections of mercy petitions in recent years, especially, after Mr. Pranab Mukherjee assumed office in 2012, former Presidents have[Read More…]
PUDR strongly condemns the commendation conferred on Major Leetul Gogoi by none less than the Army Chief for taking Farooq Dar hostage, tying Dar to the front of his jeep allegedly to ward off attacking stone-pelters, and then driving around for several hours to warn people that a similar fate awaited them. The incident where Dar was used as a[Read More…]
The Sessions Court in Gurgaon today announced the quantum of sentence for 31 workers convicted by it on 10th March in the State of Haryana Vs. Jiyalal and Others case. Thirteen union leaders have been awarded life imprisonment, four others five years imprisonment and remaining 14 sentence as already undergone. Peoples Union for Democratic Rights strongly condemns not just the[Read More…]
In the most appalling display of hooliganism in the name of nationalism, the members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) took to violence in the premises of Delhi University over the last two days. The complete impunity that they enjoyed was evident in the fact that despite heavy police presence in campus on both days, the goons were allowed to[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the anti-women stand of the Naga HoHo/ Naga Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) in the context of reservation of seats for women in elections to local urban bodies. The accompanying mob-violence and the threats to women who wanted to contest from reserved seats, reveals the irony that a movement fighting for freedom for Naga people is willing to suppress[Read More…]
PUDR welcomes the decision of the President commuting the death sentences of Nanhe Lal Mochi, Veer Kuar Paswan, Krishna Mochi and Dharmender Singh, convicted in the Bara massacre of 1992 for killing 35 members of the Bhumihar caste in Bihar. Commutation in this case, however, is justice half done as the four prisoners will continue to languish in jail indefinitely[Read More…]
In continuation with our previous two petitions dated 22nd February 2016 and 26th February 2016, we wish to draw you attention to the consistent erosion of rule of law and constitutional freedoms in Chhattisgarh in the wake of continuing attacks on civil rights defenders by the state police and administration in close collusion with the vigilante groups like the Samajik Ekta Manch and AGNI. In the most recent case of attack, on 25th December, 2016 a 7 member fact finding team was arrested by the Telangana police at Dummaguddem village of Bhadrachalam district at 6 pm and handed over to the Sukma Police (Chhattisgarh State).
On 30th November 2016, the Supreme Court of India issued an interim order laying out seven directives to be followed marking respect for the National Anthem of India. These included the requirement for all to stand whenever the national anthem was played as well the compulsory playing of the national anthem at all cinema halls before every screening. The directives were[Read More…]
PUDR notes with concern the intimidation of the residents of Kathputli colony by the Delhi police since the night of 18 December. While Police presence was visible in and around Kathputli colony for the past few days, the police were deployed in large numbers (approx. 250 police personnel) on 18th night and barricades around the colony were erected. The next morning,[Read More…]
On 27th October 2016 several organisations in Delhi came together in protest at Jantar Mantar demanding restoration of civil liberties and democratic rights in Kashmir. People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) affirms its solidarity with the people of Kashmir who have been battling a state of siege for over 100 days. In 111 days, since July 8th, the aged, the infants,[Read More…]
PUDR strongly condemns the burning of the effigies of activists and a journalist by the Chhatissgarh Auxiliary police force across Bastar in a widely publicised ‘offical protest on 24th October. This show of strength by state forces against civilians was the latest and most brazen example of the patronage extended by the government and its systematic fostering of a Police[Read More…]
Peoples Union for Democratic Rights is horrified that the Rajya Sabha which debated the situation in Jammu and Kashmir on August 10, could not muster resolve to call for an immediate halt to use of pellet guns, which is not used anywhere in either India or the world for policing. Since the killing of Burhan Muzzafar Wani on July 8,[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the incident of flogging, stripping and parading of seven men belonging to the chamar caste by vigilante gaurakshaks on 11 July 2016 in Mota Samadhiyala village, Una taluka, Gir Somnath District Gujarat, which has brought the Brahmanical character of Hindutva cow politics and the caste character of the state to centre stage. It has been widely reported that[Read More…]
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
