Stan Swamy: A Messiah or Maoist? The Truth of Bhima Koregaon | Elgar Parishad | BK 16 Bhima Koregaon Case: Jul 8 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0SdQ0TOfM4
Bhima Koregaon Case: Trial Is the Intent of Draconian UAPA Law https://thewire.in/rights/bhima-koregaon-case-trying-without-a-trial-is-the-intent-of-draconian-uapa-law Rajshree Chandra
Enacted in 1967, UAPA initially gave powers to the Union government to impose all-India bans on unlawful associations...The case against civil liberties and constitutional remedies got a draconian push by the Supreme Court’s Watali judgement (2019), which made bail a virtual impossibility for those charged under the UAPA. ... this judgment is a reversal of the Supreme Court’s own ruling in the Balchand case (1978) that made “bail the rule and jail the exception”, balancing the values of individual liberty and exigencies of security. ..
In one of the earliest pleas in the Bhima Koregaon arrests, five of the accused had petitioned the Supreme Court in August 2018. The petitioners’ plea was only for a probe by a special investigation team (SIT), given the glaring lapses and bizarre conclusions in the rather tendentious findings of the Mumbai police.
In one instance, the inflammatory speech referred to in the FIR was actually a Marathi translation of verses from the German play The Good Persons of Szechwan by Betrolt Brecht.
In another, despite the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory (Pune) raising many red flags on the veracity of “conspiracy letters”, they were selectively flashed by ADG of Maharashtra Police at a press briefing to suggest that the arrested activists were involved in a plot to assassinate the prime minister. All this was evidence placed before the court. The Supreme Court, however in its wisdom, dismissed the plea for SIT.
The purpose of this arbitrary “trial-without-a-trial” is no longer justice, where the guilty are punished and the innocent are set free. It is to convert the law into a tool of sustained suppression of citizens who are thinking, questioning and a little more dissenting that the state is willing to tolerate. “Trial by process” is the political and organisational logic of the UAPA.