Koregaon Bhima
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Koregaon Bhima battle
2018: the 1818 Koregaon Bhima battle's echoes
See also: Battle of Bhima- Koregaon: 1818
Radheshyam Jadhav, Fresh twist to Maha’s Dalit politics, January 3, 2018: The Times of India
From: Radheshyam Jadhav, Fresh twist to Maha’s Dalit politics, January 3, 2018: The Times of India
Backward Bloc Consolidating In Bihar-Like Pattern: Dalit Intellectuals
Maharashtra’s Dalit politics is moving in a different direction on the lines of the Triveni Sangh experiment in Bihar where the backward communities consolidated their power against upper castes, say Dalit intellectuals and activists in reaction to the developments at Koregaon Bhima on Monday.
Right-wing and Dalit historians have their own versions of the Koregaon Bhima battle. For Dalits, it was a battle against casteist Peshwa rulers, while for right-wing historians it pitted the British against indigenous rulers.
“Koregaon Bhima must be seen from two angles — the British fulfilled their agenda to gain power and the oppressed communities, comprising agricultural workers, found a way to fight oppressors,” Paul Divakar, a Dalit intellectual with the New Delhi-based National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, said. “A Triveni Sangh is happening in Maharashtra and Koregaon Bhima developments might be a new beginning.”
Triveni Sangh was formed by Yadav-Koeri-Kurmi communities as a front to fight upper castes’ domination in Bihar in the 1930s. It changed the socio-political discourse of the region. Divakar added that as of now BJP and Shiv Sena have succeeded in getting the support of Matang and Mahar communities, respectively, while Congress is confused about its stand on caste politics. “ I don’t see these developments as against one caste. It is more than that,” Divakar added.
Dalit activists in Maharashtra said there is a vacuum in Dalit politics. “Ramdas Athavale has aligned with BJP and Prakash Ambedkar’s party has not succeeded in garnering a mass base. Jignesh Mevani and Prakash Ambedkar coming together and other backward parties joining the move is the beginning of new Dalit politics after the Dalit Panther era,” Dalit leader R S Kamble said.
The socialist and Leftist parties in Maharashtra are eager to join the bandwagon. The R-S-S leadership is cautious. R-S-S veteran from Pune, Aniruddha Deshpande, said, “It is a complicated situation. The British took control of Shaniwarwada and the Dalits were part of their army. I don’t think it is appropriate to comment on these developments.”
Supreme Court‘s Judgement, 2018 Sept
The Supreme Court refused to interfere with the arrest of five rights activists by the Maharashtra Police in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence case and declined to appoint a SIT to probe their arrest.
The three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, in a 2:1 verdict, refused the plea seeking the immediate release of the activists.
The majority verdict said accused persons cannot choose which investigating agency should probe the case, and this was not a case of arrest merely because of difference in political views.
Justice A M Khanwilkar read out the majority verdict for himself and the CJI, while Justice D Y Chandrachud said he was unable to agree with the view of the two judges.
Justice Chandrachud, in his judgement dissenting with the majority, said arrest of the five accused was an attempt by state to muzzle dissent, and dissent is symbol of a vibrant democracy.
The five activists -- Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha -- are under arrest at their respective homes since August 29.
The Maharashtra Police had arrested them on August 28 in connection with an FIR lodged following a conclave -- ‘Elgaar Parishad’ -- held on December 31 last year that had later triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima village in the state.
Prominent Telugu poet Rao was arrested on August 28 from Hyderabad, while activists Gonsalves and Ferreira were nabbed from Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bharadwaj from Faridabad in Haryana and civil liberties activist Navlakha from Delhi.
The majority verdict said the protection of house arrest of the activists will remain in force for four more weeks to enable the accused to seek appropriate legal remedy at appropriate legal forum.
It said arrests were not because of dissent of activists but there was prima facie material to show their link with a banned CPI (Maoist) organisation.
The majority verdict disagreed with the PIL by historian Romila Thapar and others seeking the immediate release of five rights activist, with liberty to the accused to seek remedy in appropriate court.
Justice Khanwilkar said the protection of house arrest shall remain in force for four weeks to enable the accused to seek legal remedy.
He refrained from commenting on the case, saying it may prejudice the case of accused and prosecution.
Justice Chandrachud said liberty cherished by the Constitution, would have no meaning if persecution of the five activists is allowed without proper investigation.
He said the petition was genuine and lashes out at the Maharashtra Police for their press meet and distribution of letters to the media.
Justice Chandrachud said the court should proceed as if personal practices are essential but whether they are derogatory to liberty, dignity enshrined in Fundamental Rights.
He said letters alleged to be written by activist Sudha Bharadwaj were flashed on TV channels. Police selectively disclosing the probe details to media amounts to casting a cloud on fair investigation, he said.
The losing counsel’s critique of the judgement
Abhishek Singhvi, Flawed Koregaon Bhima Judgment, October 3, 2018: The Times of India
Justice Chandrachud’s soaring dissent is an appeal to the brooding spirit of law
All fundamental rights are vital but if forced to prioritise, liberty must stand first. Judges must bend over backwards to exercise that bit of extra discretion to uphold liberty, more than any other virtuous goal of our Constitution. Sadly, the Supreme Court (SC) in its majority judgment in Koregaon Bhima (KB) fails this acid test while Justice Chandrachud’s soaring dissent is likely to find a resounding echo in a future majority.
As i was the lead (and losing) counsel for the petitioners you are entitled to discount everything in this article, ascribing it to a poor loser. But my sense of dissatisfaction arises not from the loss but simply because the core and dispositive issues argued were not even addressed, even by way of rejection, by the majority.
Barring the first two, the following powerful and cumulative aggregation of admitted circumstantial facts were regrettably not even discussed nor even prima facie rejected by the majority. The detainees were not named in the FIR; they were admittedly not present at the KB event; the fact-finding report of the Committee admittedly constituted by an IG of police found material evidence to conclude that KB violence was preplanned by right wingers Bhide and Ekbote; this was also the state government’s stand on affidavit in SC in earlier cases; nonetheless, one was never arrested and the other released on bail within one month.
Additionally, two press conferences by the police flashed 13 letters selectively insinuating guilt, but the letters were not placed in SC nor mentioned in the transit remand. No fresh FIR was filed regarding the PM assassination plot and, as the dissent tellingly points out, “no effort has been made by the ASG to submit that any such investigation is being conducted in regard to five individuals (petitioners). On the contrary, he fairly stated that there was no basis to link the five arrested individuals to any such alleged plot against the PM. Nor does the counter affidavit make any averment to that effect”. None of this is mentioned in the majority.
The alleged materials against arrestees were gathered from third persons and the PM plot was based upon letters sent or received by one “Comrade R”. A final trial court judgment after full trial convicted Saibaba and returned a judicial finding that Comrade R was in fact none other than Saibaba, who was admittedly always under police/ judicial custody from months before the allegedly inculpatory letters were written. How a convict under custody could write or receive letters plotting to assassinate the PM remains a grand mystery which the majority does not even note. One letter appeared to be an obvious fabrication since it has over 17 references to words ascribed in Devnagari using Marathi forms of grammar and address, while the alleged author Sudha is non-Marathi.
Law mandates the presence of at least one independent witness who is a respectable member of the locality where the arrest is made, whereas the two Panch witnesses in the KB case are admittedly employees of the Pune Municipal Corporation who admittedly travelled with the police from Pune to Faridabad! Both this and the fact that 99.99% of the over 50 prior criminal cases collectively attributed to the arrestees had led to discharge, acquittal or quashing are ignored. The majority does not even note the total absence of evidence showing membership of CPI (Maoist), much less activity by arrestees on behalf of it and ignores the many judicial precedents appointing SITs and holding direct petitions in SC to be maintainable.
It oversimplifies by addressing only two points, viz whether the investigating agency should be changed at the behest of the five accused and whether a SIT should be appointed. As is obvious, even these two issues are opposite sides of the same coin. The other issues relating to locus had vanished as the arrestees themselves had filed applications directly in the SC.
Ironically, this sole issue on which the entire operative part of the majority (from paras 20 to 37) is based also does not arise for the simple reason that the petitioners had repeated in writing and oral arguments that they wanted neither exemption from investigation nor transfer from or substitution of the investigating agency. An SIT was only asked for supervisory purposes to lend independence and credibility to the investigation, which would continue to be done by the state prosecuting agencies.
By contrast, the dissent is masterful in its language, eloquence, comprehensiveness and soaring spirit. It will, in times to come, indubitably satisfy the prophetic words of a former US SC chief justice: “A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting justice believes the court to have been betrayed.”
Each one of the relevant probative issues listed above (and ignored by the majority) has been painstakingly addressed in the dissent. The judicial precedents cited by the petitioners have been approbated while state citations have been carefully and convincingly distinguished. The dissent sees judicial interference on such core issues of liberty as the “constitutional duty of the court so that justice is not compromised” and “not derailed”. It treats a fair investigative process as “the basic entitlement of every citizen faced with allegations of criminal wrongdoings” and “dissent as a symbol of a vibrant democracy (where) voices in opposition cannot be muzzled by persecuting those who take unpopular causes.”
The writer is National Spokesperson, Congress and former Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law. Views are personal
