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Surendra Gadling | |
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| Occupation | Human rights lawyer |
Surendra Gadling is a human rights lawyer and Dalit rights activist based in Nagpur.
|
Surendra Gadling | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Human rights lawyer |
Surendra Gadling is a human rights lawyer and Dalit rights activist based in Nagpur.
Surendra was born into a Dalit family in Indora, a slum community in Nagpur. He lives in Bhim Chowk with his wife, two children and mother.
Surendra started his career as an apprentice in the railways.
He is known for taking up cases of illegal killings, police excesses, fakes cases, and atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis in Gadchiroli and Gondia districts. [1] [2] He is considered to be an expert in special laws like UAPA, the Forest Rights Act, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. [2]
He represented Arun Ferreira between 2007 and 2012. [3] Until his arrest, he was handling the case of G.N. Saibaba, a Delhi University professor and wheelchair user who was jailed for alleged Naxal links. [1] [2] Advocate Mihir Desai took over the case from him. [2]
He is known to take up most of his cases pro bono. [2]
While working as an apprentice in the Railways, Surendra started the Awhan Natya Manch, which would organise cultural evenings in the bastis of Nagpur and engage in conversations around rights and oppressions. [2]
Gadling was part of an independent fact-finding team that probed the encounter killing of 40 alleged Maoists by the police in Gadhchiroli in April 2018. [1]
He was a member of the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) and CRPP.
On 25 December 2016, Surendra Gadling was arrested along with Varavara Rao in the Surajgarh Mine Arson Case. [4] [5] On 6 June 2018 he was arrested by the Pune Police, along with four others- Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson and Mahesh Raut. They were accused of having Maoist links and were charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). [1] On 8 June 2018, he was moved from police remand to judicial custody on account of his deteriorating health condition, after he was moved to Sasoon Hospital in Pune. [2]
Pendyala Varavara Rao is an Indian activist, poet, teacher, and writer from Telangana, India. He is an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence and has been arrested under the non-bailable Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Rao was arrested on the charge of plotting to assassinate Indian prime minister, possibly based upon planted evidence. In August 2022, he was released on bail by the Supreme Court of India, on medical grounds.
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is an Indian law aimed at the prevention of unlawful activities associations in India. Its main objective was to make powers available for dealing with activities directed against the integrity and sovereignty of India. The most recent amendment of the law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019 has made it possible for the Union Government to designate individuals as terrorists without following any formal judicial process. UAPA is also known as the "Anti-terror law".
The Battle of Koregaon was fought on 1 January 1818 between the British East India Company and the Peshwa faction of the Maratha Confederacy, at Koregaon Bhima.
Sudhir Dhawale is an Indian activist, actor and publisher of the bi-monthly Marathi magazine Vidrohi. He is also the founder of organisation, Republican Panthers.
Anand Teltumbde is an Indian scholar, writer, and human rights activist who is a management professor at the Goa Institute of Management. He has written extensively about the caste system in India and has advocated for the rights of Dalits.
Koregaon Bhima is a panchayat village and census town in the state of Maharashtra, India, on the left (north) bank of the Bhima River. Administratively, Koregaon Bhima is under Shirur Taluka of Pune District in Maharashtra. There is only the single town of Koregaon Bhima in the Koregaon Bhima gram panchayat. The town of Koregaon Bhima is 10 km along the SH 60 motorway southwest of the village of Shikrapur, and 28 km by road northeast of the city of Pune. It is the site of the Battle of Koregaon fought on 1 January 1818.
Gautam Navlakha is an Indian human rights activist, journalist, and prisoner. He has written on left-wing extremism and is a critic of army and state atrocities in Kashmir. He is a member of People's Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi. He is also an editorial consultant of the Economic and Political Weekly. He resides in New Delhi.
Sudha Bharadwaj is a trade-unionist, activist and lawyer who has lived and worked in Chhattisgarh for over three decades. She is an active member of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha.
The 2018 battle of Bhima Koregaon refers to violence during an annual celebratory gathering on 1 January 2018 at Bhima Koregaon to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. The violence and stone pelting by a crowd at the gathering resulted in the death of a 28-year old youth and injuries to five others. The annual celebration, also called Elgar Parishad convention, was organised by retired justices B. G. Kolse Patil and P. B. Sawant. Justice Sawant stated that the term "Elgar" meant loud invitation or loud declaration.
The Elgaar Parishad was an event held on 31 December 2017 to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima. It was organised by a coalition of 260 non-profit organisations at Pune's Shaniwar Wada Fort, and had approximately 35,000 people in attendance. The program consisted of a number of cultural performances, speeches and slogans.
Rona Wilson is an activist, researcher and the public relations secretary of the Committee for Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP). He has worked with people accused in terrorism cases, including those booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). He is an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence.
Shoma Sen is a women's rights activist and assistant professor and was head of the English literature department of the Nagpur University. On 8 June 2018, she was arrested by the Pune Police for her alleged involvement in the Bhima Koregaon riots.
Mahesh Raut is an activist working with Adivasi in Gadchiroli. He is the youngest accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence case.
Arun Ferreira is an Indian activist. He was arrested in 2007 for alleged links to the Indian Naxalite movement and spent five years in prison before he was acquitted in 2012. He began a career as a criminal lawyer defending political prisoners. He was arrested again in August 2018 and is currently lodged in Taloja prison along with other accused of the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence
Sambhaji Bhide is a Hindutva activist from Maharashtra. Bhide, a native of Sangli district, was a full-time worker for the Hindu-nationalist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, before leaving to form his own organisation, the Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan, in the late 1980s. The organisation claimed to spread the teachings of Shivaji and his son Sambhaji.
Milind Ekbote is a resident of Shivaji Nagar, Pune. He is the president of Dharmaveer Sambhaji Maharaj Pratishthan and Samasta Hindu Aghadi (SHA), and the founder of Shiv Pratap Bhoomi Mukti Andolan.
Stanislaus Lourduswamy, SJ, popularly known as Stan Swamy, was an Indian Catholic priest, a member of the Jesuit order, and a tribal rights activist for several decades. Swamy was the oldest person to be accused of terrorism in India.
Somnath Waghmare is an Indian documentary filmmaker based in the state of Maharashtra. His most prominent and most recent film, Battle of Bhima Koregaon, was critically received and screened in India and abroad. Till now, all his films have been documentary films and they have dealt with various social issues like the persecution of women and Dalit assertion in Maharashtra. He made his directorial debut with the short documentary feature I Am Not a Witch (2017). His upcoming films are Chaityabhoomi and Gail and Bharat.
Vernon Gonsalves is a trade unionist, activist and academic, and an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence. His wife, lawyer Susan Abraham, is also a workers rights activist. Vernon was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba was an Indian scholar, writer and human rights activist from Amalapuram, Andhra Pradesh.