Siddhartha Deb: The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed? / Sudhir Chandra: More than a Judicial Murder

In April 2018, a large group of policemen arrived at the Delhi flat of Rona Wilson, a 47-year-old human rights activist. They had travelled from Pune in the western state of Maharashtra, and appeared, accompanied by Delhi police officials, at Wilson’s single-room flat at 6am. For the next eight hours, they scoured the modest premises, searching the files on Wilson’s laptop and rifling through his books. Annoyed and short of sleep, he asked that they be put back in place after they had been scrutinised. When the police eventually left, they took away Wilson’s Hewlett-Packard laptop, a SanDisk thumb drive and his mobile phone.

Seven weeks later, the police were back at Wilson’s flat, this time to arrest him. He was accused of conspiring to assassinate the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and planning to overthrow the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Evidence of these crimes had allegedly been found on his laptop. Wilson was flown to Pune, charged under India’s anti-terror law and incarcerated. More than three years after the arrest, he remains in prison….

In July 2021, the Guardian and a consortium of news organisations revealed that Pegasus spyware had been used by a number of repressive governments around the world to spy on human rights defenders, activists and journalists. Modi’s government was said to be among those using Pegasus, and it was reportedly found to be targeting opposition politicians, journalists and activists in India. Among potential targets were, it was claimed, eight of the BK 16, including Rona Wilson...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/bhima-koregaon-case-india-conspiracy-modi

Sudhir Chandra: More than a Judicial Murder

It is more than a month since Father Stan Swamy’s death. Death – the neutral word jars. Particularly when seemingly more appropriate expressions like ‘murder by the state’, ‘institutional murder’ and ‘judicial killing’ have spontaneously sprung into use to describe the shocking occurrence. However, even as these charged terms highlight much of what is entailed in Swamy’s death, they miss something vital. It should concern us, as individual human beings and as a people, to reflect on that missing something. How we understand that, and what that understanding makes us do or not do, will have serious repercussions for our individual and collective well-being….

https://thewire.in/rights/stan-swamy-death-india-criminal-justice

Socrates: If the whole is ailing the part cannot be well / Ajit Prakash Shah: Darkness at noon, felled by the judiciary

मुझे पूरीउम्मीद है कि आप अपनी बारी आने से पहले बोलेंगे– डॉ.आनंद तेलतुंबड़े