Release Gautam Navlakha Immediately!

Release all political prisoners.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Condemn the Death of Altaf Ahmad Shah

Follow Delhi High Court orders: Shift Altaf Ahmad Shah to AIIMs Delhi immediately.

Stop Denying Political Prisoners the Right to Healthcare in Jails

 As part of its campaign for the release of activists incarcerated in the Bhima Koregaon case, PUDR has created posters in English and Hindi which portray the draconian features of UAPA along with portraits of the activists.   

Posters in English

Posters in Hindi

This newsletter is the fifth in a new initiative by PUDR to keep
those interested in the organisation’s work and issues of civil
liberties and democratic rights informed of some of the issues
that we are working on. 

A more comprehensive account of the issues and organisation’s work can be found on

https://www.pudr.org/

To subscribe to the newsletter, please send an email to
[email protected]

PUDR hails the release of A. G. Perarivalan by the Supreme Court on May 18, 2022. A life-imprisonment convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case (1991), Perarivalan’s over thirty- year struggle for justice raises several issues, ranging from the unfairness of long incarceration to the uncommon fight that his mother, Arputhammal, has waged.

Tomorrow, 14^th 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.

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS

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 terrorist”—an unlisted and camouflaged militant—in the encounter that had happened in his house in Naira Pulwama on January 30, 2022.

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 to an end, a new repressive regime has been installed by Superintendent UT Pawar.