Mahendra Karma

"No, No way he was not a crusader but lies among the oppressors and I think oppressors need this listing as well because crusaders and oppressors both are ideas, and only ideas are immortal not the humans, so listing mortals with their immortals ideas, and discriminating bad ideas with good and ideas those were bad and need societal condemnation ....  there you go boy, the first bad idea ...."

"Mahendra Karma of the Congress (I) is one of the major tribal leaders of the Salwa Judum. He is a known figure in the region, politically and otherwise. Originally from Pharasepal village, he belongs to the Kashyap clan. Pharasepal and its surrounding villages are known to have several landed households (their wealth measured by the fact that they sell 3-4 truckloads of rice), many of which are related to Karma. His father, Boodha Majhi, was a clan mukhia who also used to collect taxes for the raja.

Karma first began his political work with the All India Students Federation (AISF) while he was in the Law College at Jagdalpur. His active political career began around 1975. He went on to become a CPI MLA in 1978, but was denied a CPI ticket in 1981 on the grounds of his poor performance. He joined the Congress upon this, of which his brother was already a member. In the 1981 elections, which he contested as a Congress candidate, he lost the Dantewada seat to the CPI. Following turmoil in the Congress party, he joined the new party floated by Madhavrao Scindia, and was one of the two Members of Parliament elected on this ticket. In the eighties, he is seen to have established close relations with business interests in Dantewada and emerged as an opponent of the CPI-led Swayatta Andolan Following the formation of Chhattisgarh state,
Karma became a minister in Ajit Jogi’s cabinet. Karma is now the official ‘tribal leader’ of the Congress (I) in the state (till 2006)"

Malik Makbuja Scam:
Quoting from Tehelka Report (Story by Keya Acharya)

 "Nearly half a century ago, in 1955, Devinder Nath, an idealistic young ias officer, nervous at his first appointment as district collector (dc), found himself in a remote village called Bhanupratappur, in what is now Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district. The villages, inhabited predominantly by adivasis, were known for their magnificent teak and hardwood trees.
Earlier, local zamindars needing handy labour encouraged tribals to live inside forests but without access to its trees. After 1949, changed land laws allowed tribals right to forest lands, the latter on a government-fixed fee. Those holding tree rights thus became Malik Makbujas, currently an infamous phrase.
In Bhanupratappur, Nath found timber merchants duping Malik Makbuja tribals into bogus contracts surrendering their rights. In one case, a man gave up his trees in exchange for his young daughter and him to be taken to the cinema in town. In another, a tribal resisting a contractor was arrested by the local police for criminal intimidation. Nath described the robbing spree as the teak rush, “an exploitation, the likes of which, has rarely been seen anywhere in the country”.
With integrity and courage, there being no laws prohibiting these contracts, Nath curtailed the transportation of timber under the flimsy motor vehicle violation laws and got the chief minister’s unstinted support to see the mp Protection of Scheduled Tribes (Interest in Trees) Act, 1956, passed within six months.
The new law empowered only Malik Makbujas to seek permission from the collector to sell a fixed amount of their timber annually. These could be sold only through the forest department which fixed the rate, the idea being to give a fair price to the tribals. Nath, in his naivety and idealism, thought the collector as government administrator would ensure justice to the tribals. Fifty years later, a Bastar Commissioner, Narayan Singh, currently a member of the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Board at Bilaspur, along with four additional collectors, all still serving, have been indicted in the country’s biggest environmental corruption case unearthed so far, now known as the Malik Makbuja scandal.
Tribals, tricked into thinking they were selling the trees, have through signed powers of attorney, lost their lands. They have been handed a pittance for their trees. The fraud has also involved redesigning government maps to show reserved forests as private lands.
Out of the Rs 12.14 crore that the forest department is recorded to have paid to the power of attorney holders for the timber (several cases have no records of money paid by the forest department), Malik Makbujas received approximately Rs 13.80 lakh."

excerpts - 

 "Soon after forming the anti-Maoist “armed civilian vigilante” movement, Salwa Judum (SJ) in 2005, Mr. Karma realised that there was big money in the anti-Maoist operations. A member of a business family of Bastar told this correspondent that they started financing Salwa Judum, sometime after its formation. “We wanted land prices to escalate, so we could sell it off. We felt if Maoists disappear and industries arrive, the prices will go up and SJ provided a solution,” he said. Eventually, Mr. Karma started getting state funding as well."

"Mr. Karma’s political career started waning as SJ collapsed. Finally, last Thursday, a Central Minister made it clear that ‘Bastar Tiger’ is no more the mascot of the party in Bastar. Perhaps the party realised that Mr. Karma had lost his base among his people after SJ. Out of this realisation his political masters announced his end on Thursday. His rivals, some of whom could well have been from his clan, killed him two days after."

Articles:

• A full PDF about Chhatisgarh in 2006 - Where the state makes a war on its own People
• The Hindu Article here
• The Hindu article here
• Livemint report here

Binayak Sen

Excerpts -

"Sen highlighted and publicised the Malik Makbuja system. It was a form of corruption by which tribals have for several years been scammed out of valuable timber on their land by colluding traders and politicians. He later lifted the lid off Salwa Judum (‘Purification Hunt’, in the local Gondi dialect), which has since 2005, through state sponsorship, destroyed villages in south Chhattisgarh and forcibly resettled tens of thousands into concentration camp-like horrors to deny Maoists shelter, recruits and network. Exceeding the energy of the Maoist rebels they accuse of brutality, police, paramilitary and Salwa Judum recruits have in concert freely killed unarmed men, women and children."

"As the state fought back with overkill, Sen suggested that the Salwa Judum could have been created to help business interests. He named the Tata, Essar and Jindal business houses, among others. The government, he suggested, hadn’t safeguarded the interests of tribal and forest dwellers before trading their futures for Rs 17,000 crore in memoranda signed with businesses from home and abroad to mine iron ore and diamonds, and to set up iron and steel and power plants."


"Four years ago, on a cold February morning outside a court in Raipur, a man with gentle eyes and a long grey beard had pressed his face through the iron grill of a jail van and spoken urgently as I stood outside on my toes, straining to hear him. Gun-toting commandos surrounded the van. It had not been easy to push past them to get face time. No one had really heard of Binayak Sen then. It was the first time someone from the national media had come listening. There were many things Sen could have pleaded through that window. He had already been in jail for nine months. He could have urged one to talk up his story in Delhi’s power circles, urged one to start a campaign for him. But, astonishingly, Sen’s urgencies had lain elsewhere.
“You have to go back and write about how we are creating two categories of human beings in this country,” he had said, as the commandos tried to nudge us out of range. “You have to write about the famine and malnutrition rampant everywhere. We are living out the Malthusian theory…”

Activist and a Doctor
Falsely accused by Govt. for sedition
life-term imprisonment
later released in April 2011

This did not sound like a man who was a dire national security threat. But Sen had been put in jail for “waging war against the nation” and it took another year and more for him to get bail from the Supreme Court. The freedom was shortlived. On 25 December 2010, a trial court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Sen was re-arrested. Last week, the Chhattisgarh High Court refused to suspend the sentence and denied him bail again. He may not have waged war against the nation, it said, but he stood guilty of sedition: Why had he raised his voice against the State?"

"SOME STORIES need to be retold. Binayak Sen’s is one of them, for it asks uneasy questions about our society, governance, even ourselves. In his aptly titled The Curious Case of Binayak Sen, Dilip D’Souza looks at the farce that is the sedition case against Sen for his alleged interaction with Maoists. He presents facts that throw light on the rot that exists at the core of the system.

In the very first chapter, D’Souza unapologetically explains that he is not attempting a biography. He cleverly builds a context through which Sen must be viewed before he is pronounced a hero, offering details like why Sen chose medicine, the various speeches and presentations he made and what he believed in as a doctor.

Examining the sedition case, D’Souza puts forth plain facts — emails, chargesheets and witness accounts to illustrate the absurdity of the charge made against Sen. For instance, D’Souza successfully punctures the Indian Social Institute and Chhattisgarh Police’s claims that there was no medical equipment in Sen’s house. These details, though intriguing, will be familiar to those who have followed the case closely. But then the truth lies in the details.

For D’Souza, Sen is the reference point for what he identifies as the two major setbacks for civil society. First, he mourns the loss of the desire for nation-building that informed the worldview of independent India’s first generation. Second, he is critical of the apathy of the urban middle-class towards social issues. For instance, no young doctor has volunteered to shoulder Sen or his colleague Saibal Jana’s responsibilities at their Shahid Hospital in Dalli-Rajhara.

I remember meeting the Sen family two years ago in Raipur when Binayak was sentenced. The family was calm, except for Dipankar, Sen’s Belgium-based brother, who wanted to take his nieces and sister-in-law out of the country. Each time, Dipankar made an offer, Sen’s wife Ilina turned it down. His family’s resilience and grace under pressure reflected Binayak’s own.

The Supreme Court granted bail to him in 2011. Far from being disillusioned, Sen, the man labelled a Maoist, continues with his humanitarian work. D’Souza’s book pays tribute to a man undeterred by a government’s blatant bullying."

Tehelka Interview - here
Open Magazine - The SIN of Binayak Sen - here

Kopa Kunjam

The Grassroot Visionary

Kopa Kunjam
worked with Manish Kumar

A tribal activist from Dantewada, Chhattisgarh,Kopa Kunjam spent 22 months in jail for the murder of a sarpanch he tried to save. At the time of his arrest, Kopa had been implementing Supreme Court orders on the ground, helping rehabilitate villagers displaced by the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. First an ordinary farmer, then a schoolteacher in a local village school, Kopa began social work after discovering the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), an NGO in Dantewada.
As a VCA worker, Kopa travelled to remote v
illages wrecked by the conflict. He brought food and clothes, helped villagers rebuild their homes and taught them how to fight with local ration shops for their due ration. When Maoists tried to enter Lingagiri, a village razed by the Salwa Judum, he stopped them. When the Salwa Judum tried to re-enter the same village, he taught villagers how to unite in a human shield. Soon, Kopa became someone who could take on both the State and Maoists. He earned the trust of his own tribal community and took on a leadership role.
He helped show State complicity in the massacres of Matwada and Singaram where innocent villagers were killed by the Salwa Judum. He exposed scams in the implementation of the MGNREGA and the PDS. In December 2009, Maoists abducted two village leaders and killed one. Kopa happened to be travelling on the same road and was the first to inform the police. Months later, he was arrested as a Maoist accomplice for the same murder. Kopa was released on bail in October this year and continues to fight the case in court.

The youtube video by Manish Kumar here during Think 2011

Himanshu Kumar

Himanshu Kumar, a Gandhian from Meerut had spent 17 years working in Dantewada. He had an ashram on the outskirts of the forest where tribals from the deep interiors could come for refuge. Here they learnt how to file FIRs, petition the district collector, interact with forest officials, seek redress. But on 16 May 2009, as Indians elsewhere were celebrating a peaceful General Election — proud symbol of India’s vibrant democracy — a posse of policemen and several bulldozers rolled into Himanshu’s ashram and razed it to the ground. He sat with his wife and daughters under a tree and watched. His elder daughter cried as it rained. When the police were done, not a trace of the 17 years remained. Just a drooping crocus and, ironically, pamphlets in Gondi urging tribals to vote.
For several months more, Himanshu tried to continue his work from a makeshift ashram nearby. Then, as the intimidations piled up, one evening he shed his trademark white kurta, shaved his moustache, disguised himself in red shirt and jeans, scaled the wall of his house and came away to Delhi. He has never gone back.
Himanshu Kumar too could have closed his eyes the day the first raped and maimed tribal girl limped into his ashram. He knew filing hundreds of cases against the police would rouse the beast. He knew he was putting his family in jeopardy. But he chose
Himanshu Kumar’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, which works for tribal rights in Chhattisgarh, faced a suspension order in 2009 on the grounds of “threat to national security”. Himanshu says that he was asked to go to the District Collector’s office for the inspection of documents, whereas according to FCRA norms, the inspection is supposed to take place in the organisation’s office, whose licence is under consideration. A month-and-a-half later, he was asked to come to Delhi to submit the records in the ministry, but when that too failed to bring any relief, he sought legal recourse.
Himanshu — a man of irrepressible positivity and a humblingly ready smile — came to Dantewada in 1992. His father, Prakash Kumar had given up college in 1942 to join the Quit India movement; he met Gandhi in Sewagram in 1945. Later, he joined Vinobha Bhave’s Bhoomidan movement. “My father helped give away over 20 lakh acres of land in Uttar Pradesh,” says Himanshu, “but he and I do not possess one acre between us.” Inspired by his father and men like Vinobha Bhave, Himanshu started out under a tree inDantewada, asking tribals questions about their lives and needs, slowly helping them heal ailments like diarrhoea, snake bites, malaria and pneumonia. As their trust grew, the local gram sabha offered Himanshu a patch of land and built him a mud hut to live with them. For 13 years, there was no trouble as Himanshu and Veena — unusual daughter of a garment exporter in Raja Garden, Delhi, and a woman of equally inspiring positivity — went about their advocacy work. The trouble began in 2005, when the Chhattisgarh government started the Salwa Judum.
Himanshu began to protest against the excesses of the State, in particular the police andSalwa Judum vigilantes. He sent Sonia’s story to the National Women’s Commission: chairperson Girija Vyas did not think it worth investigating. Since then, Himanshu has sent hundreds of complaints to the Human Rights Commission. Their response? A committee led by the police to investigate police atrocities. Himanshu then also sent at least 1,000 complaints to the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Dantewada. He refused to file FIRs. (In fact, when Himanshu took up a recent false encounter case in Singaram, where 19 tribals were shot dead by the police, SP Rahul Sharma brazenly told the Bilaspur High Court that he had refused to file FIRs because Himanshu always lodged false complaints — forgetting that it is for the courts and not the police to decide whether a FIR is baseless or not.)
Himanshu’s advocacy brought him increasingly into hostile radar — erasing his past reputation for humanitarian work. In 2006, suddenly — 13 years after he began to work here — the state government sent him a notice declaring his ashram an illegal encroachment. Himanshu produced all the relevant papers. The issue went to court. In January this year, the government suddenly cancelled his FCRA and choked off his foreign grants. Himanshu had to let go of almost a hundred full-time workers. On May 16 — as the country was celebrating Indian democracy and the mandate for a stable government — Himanshu was suddenly handed a notice that his ashram was up for demolition the next day — illegally, since it was a Sunday. He called Chhattisgarh Chief Secretary P Joy Oomen and reminded him that the issue was still in court and that the next hearing was on June 17. Oomen assured him the ashram would not be demolished. The next morning the bulldozers moved in.

On 17 May, a day after the Lok Sabha election results, a police force of over 500 surrounded Himanshu’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, ten kilometers from Dantewada town. He was given half an hour to wrap up two decades of work. Then, the bulldozers moved in. They broke everything: home, dispensary, dormitories, training halls, kitchen, telephone towers (sanctioned by the government itself), swing, even a lone hand-pump that was the only source of clean water for the villages around. “Like skimming malaifrom milk”, says Veena, Himanshu’s wife.
As the bulldozers stamped the ashram out, it began to rain. Himanshu and Veena sat under a tree with their daughters — Alisha, 12, a student of Rishi Valley School, and Haripriya, a spunky 7-year old — and watched. Alisha began to cry. “I told her, if you do good work, you have to be ready for the tough times. I am glad they saw it happen. It was good training for my daughters,” says Himanshu. (It was good training for others too. The police caught two students from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru who were visiting for field work and beat them. They yanked a journalism student, Veronica, by the hair and beat Javed Iqbal, a young freelance photographer from Mumbai, who had been travelling in the interiors, photographing the State’s assault on its villagers.)
On 17 May, a day after the Lok Sabha election results, a police force of over 500 surrounded Himanshu’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, ten kilometers from Dantewada town. He was given half an hour to wrap up two decades of work. Then, the bulldozers moved in. They broke everything: home, dispensary, dormitories, training halls, kitchen, telephone towers (sanctioned by the government itself), swing, even a lone hand-pump that was the only source of clean water for the villages around. “Like skimming malaifrom milk”, says Veena, Himanshu’s wife.
As the bulldozers stamped the ashram out, it began to rain. Himanshu and Veena sat under a tree with their daughters — Alisha, 12, a student of Rishi Valley School, and Haripriya, a spunky 7-year old — and watched. Alisha began to cry. “I told her, if you do good work, you have to be ready for the tough times. I am glad they saw it happen. It was good training for my daughters,” says Himanshu. (It was good training for others too. The police caught two students from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru who were visiting for field work and beat them. They yanked a journalism student, Veronica, by the hair and beat Javed Iqbal, a young freelance photographer from Mumbai, who had been travelling in the interiors, photographing the State’s assault on its villagers.)

• Himanshu Kumar, Salwa Judum and Mahendra Karma - here
• Shoma Chaudhary Report here
• A letter by Himanshu Kumar here
• Tehelka Coverage here

- From Tehelka

Satyendra Dubey

Satyendra Dubey, whistleblower for NHAI
Project, martyred in Gaya on Nov27, 2003

Satyendra Dubey, whistleblower for NHAI
Project, martyred in Gaya on Nov27, 2003

While working at the NHAI, Dubey discovered that the contracted firm assigned to build sections of the roads, Larsen & Toubro, had been subcontracting the actual work to smaller groups, controlled by the local mafia. He found that these smaller contractors did not have the expertise to build quality roads. Later on, Dubey reportedly had the contractor rebuild six kilometers of roads at a loss to the mafia. Dubey wrote to his boss, NHAI Project Director SK Soni, about the corruption in the contracting firm, but he received no response and faced several threats following his actions at Koderma.


In August 2003, against his own will, he was transferred to Gaya. At Gaya, he experienced the same corruption found in Koderma. Frustrated with the lack of action, Dubey wrote directly to the Prime Minister, detailing the financial and contractual violations in the project. He had explicitly requested to have his identity kept secret, but despite this, the letter along with his personal information was forwarded to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It is believed that the contracting firm may have had access to this letter.
On November 27, 2003, Dubey was returning from a wedding. He reached Gaya railway station at three in the morning and found that his car was not able to start. Dubey never made it home. He was found by his personal driver, shot dead in Gaya.


“A dream project of unparalleled importance to the Nation but in reality a great loot of public money... I will keep on addressing these issues in my official capacity in the limited domain within the powers delegated to me. ”
—Dubey's Letter to the Prime Minister

Wikibooks - here
Case Study - here
Reality Views - here

Shanmugh Manjunath

From Wiki -

Martyred while fighting against
adulterated petroleum distribution

While working for the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in Lucknow, he had ordered two petrol pumps at Lakhimpur Kheri sealed for selling adulterated fuel for three months. When the pump started operating again a month later, Manjunath decided to conduct a surprise raid around 19 November 2005.
Having not heard from his son for three days, at around 9 that night, his father, M Shanmughan, had sent an SMS: "How are you?". There was no reply because that very night, during his inspection, Manjunath had been shot dead in Gola Gokarannath town of Lakhimpur Kheri. His body, riddled with at least six bullets, was found in the backseat of his own car, which was being driven by two employees of the petrol pump. Both were arrested and the main accused, pump-owner Pawan Kumar ('Monu') Mittal, was held on 23 November along with seven others. Indian Oil Corporation paid INR2.6 million (US$40,000) compensation to the family.

Resources:

• Youth Icons here
• Wikipedia Link
• Whistle Blowers India Article here
• Youtube link by AAP here
• Video by NDTV here
• More Articles here

Narendra Kumar Singh

IPS officer and AMU alumni
It may be an accident or may be a cold-blooded murder.

A Glimpse of the family - Report
FirstPost Report here
India TV News Report - here

Narendra Singh, IPS Office in Morena, MP was martyred
for the reason, he was trying to stop Illegal Mining in
March 2012

Sathees

A lesser known one but he did the courage - IBN Live Report

Martyred in TN, while blocking a lorry
illegally carrying sand from the river bed,
Mar11, 2012 Report

Shehla Masood

A CNN-IBN report says Shehla had sought details about the business activities of BJP Rajya Sabha MP Anil Dave and Narmada Samagraha, an NGO backed by Dave. 
Shehla had also alleged misutilisation of funds in RSS backed Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Trust.

Shehla was shot dead on 16th August morning when she had just entered her car outside her home in Bhopal. The assailants are still at large. Meanwhile, the police have questioned several people including some attached to BJP.

• The Hindu Report
• Wikipedia Link
• A Video Tribute Link here

Oppressed:

RTI activist, martyred in Bhopal on Aug 16, 2011
She was fighting against corruption, Death of Tigers
in MP sanctuaries, Narmada Samagraha

Amit Jethwa

environment activist Amit Jethwa had just stepped out of the Gujarat High Court when two men on a motorbike shot him point blank and sped off. Jethwa had been fighting for two years against illegal mines in the Gir Lion Sanctuary, owned by a politician, Dinu Solanki. Solanki’s nephew was later arrested as the prime accused in the murder.

• Wikipedia Link
• Amit Jethwa blog page
• NDTV coverage news on July 21, 2010
• Arrest of BJP MP Dinu Solanki news
• Down To Earth Coverage

Oppressor:

Solanki, BJP MP from Junagadh,
was questioned at the CBI headquarters (New Delhi)
for seven hours and later arrested
in connection with Jethwa's murder case

Oppressed:

Jethwa, a Right to Information (RTI) and environment activist,
was shot dead outside the Gujarat High Court July 20, 2010.
He had filed numerous RTI applications and a PIL
against illegal mining in the Gir forest region of Gujarat.

Soni Sori

Soni Sori’s travails did not begin only with her arrest by the Delhi Crime Branch on 4 October 2011. As an educated woman from a politically active tribal family (her father was a sarpanch for 15 years, her uncle, a Communist Party of India Member of Legislative Assembly; her elder brother, a Congressman, and her nephew, a journalist) in a Maoist stronghold, when she along with her nephew, Lingaram Kodopi, who had studied journalism in Delhi, began voicing the concerns of her people, this automatically brought them into the radar of both the Maoists and the police and also into conflict with some powerful local people. The police tried to co-opt them as informers but when they paid no heed, it began to harass them.

On 30 August 2009, the police took Lingaram away and kept him in a police station toilet for 40 days. He was released on 10 October only after a habeas corpus petition was filed in the Chhattisgarh High Court. In 2011, the police intrigued and picked up Lingaram and one B K Lala, a contractor of the Essar group, from their houses on 9 September but claimed that they were caught red-handed exchanging money in the marketplace. Soni, who had tried to know the whereabouts of Lingaram, was declared absconding. Both were charged for acting as conduits for extortion money being paid by the Essar group to the Maoists. Despite the fact that the entire episode was exposed as a silly concoction by the Chhattisgarh police (see Tehelka, 15 October 2011), the police has persisted with the charge, unleashing inhuman atrocities and still holding Soni in jail even after her acquittal in six out of eight cases.

After her arrest on 4 October 2011 and when she was in police custody, Soni was brutally tortured. She described this torture in her letters, how she was pulled out of her cell at the Dantewada police station at midnight on 8/9 October and taken to superintendent of police, Ankit Garg’s room, where she was stripped, sexually assaulted, and two stones were put in her vagina and one in her rectum. Upon a SC order, NRS Medical College, Kolkata examined her and its report confirmed that two stones had been found to have been inserted in her vagina and one in her anus, which were the primary cause of the abdominal pain from which she was suffering. Nonetheless, the SC declined her plea to keep her in any jail outside Chhattisgarh, gave the state government 45 days to respond and virtually sent her back to her torturers.

In her letters she has specifically levelled accusations against Garg, saying: “He has taken my all. I have been tortured in ways I can’t describe here.” Her husband, running a restaurant at their native place, was already arrested as a Maoist, tortured so badly that he turned paralytic and eventually succumbed to his injuries. Soni was not allowed interim bail to attend his funeral and make arrangements for her three daughters aged five, eight and 13. Her case evoked international outrage and people like Noam Chomsky and Jean Dreze protested against the “brutal treatment meted out” to her to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but without avail. Soni Sori languishes in jail watching her world getting ruined bit by bit and her tormentor Ankit Jain getting a police medal for gallantry from the President of India.

• Tehelka Story by Shoma Ghosh here
• Soni Sori Blog Page
• The Hindu Report here
• Hardnews Media Report here
• Kracktivism here
• facebook

Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya

 

• End of an era - article
• Wikipedia article here

Naushad Kasimji

A less-known murder where it was alleged that police was behind the conspiracy.

Naushad Kasimji -
Mangalore based lawyer

The Hindu article here
DK Police blog post here 

Shahid Azmi

SHAHID AZMI
1977 – 2010
The Home Ministry, Intelligence Bureau, RAW
 and police all stand to gain from Azmi’s killing

Courtesy

Shahid Azmi (1977 – 11 February 2010) was a noted lawyer and human rights activist, known for defending those accused in cases of terrorism, including some of accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, such as Faheem Ansari, who was later acquitted for lack of evidence.

11th February 2010. Taximan Colony, Kurla, Mumbai. It was just another day for Rehana Azmi. Her son, Shahid Azmi, a Mumbai-based lawyer, had just returned from work. Rehana started preparing tea for him. His mobile rang. It was a call from his staff, Inder. He asked Shahid to come over as some clients had come to meet him. Shahid asked him to tell them to come the next morning as it was already late. “Bhai, wo kah rahe hain urgent matter hai (It’s an urgent matter, please come over),” came the reply. Given Shahid’s commitment towards his clients, no matter who they were, he went to meet them in his office. Before leaving, his mother called out to him, “Beta, chai tou peeta ja” (Have tea and go). “Ammi, abhi aata hoon (I will be right back, Mom),” came his reply. “Par, Shahid kabhi nahi lauta” (But he never returned), said Rehana, with moist eyes when I met her a few years back. But she was quick to mention, “Par hum zaroor milenge jannat mein”. (We will certainly meet in heaven).


Shahid didn’t come back because that evening, he was shot dead by some unidentified gunmen who came posing as clients in need. He was just 32 back then. Though born and brought up in Mumbai, his teenage years were singed by the fires of communal violence which stalked Bombay in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

For his first job as lawyer, he joined noted defence lawyer Majeed Memon as a junior at Rs 2,000 a month. Later, he started his own practice that made a lasting difference. In a short period of just 7 years of his career as a lawyer, he gained both fame and notoriety for his commitment for Justice. The most remarkable thing about him was that he still chose to engage with the system, a system that criminalised and brutalized him.

What is even more heartening is that across the country, there are hundreds of youth, especially Muslims—both men and women, who have taken inspiration from Shahid and are now either studying or practicing law. In fact, there are half a dozen of them in Taximan Colony itself.

Strange, as much as it may sound, but the fact of the matter remains that a person who was in love with justice— who lived and died for justice, his family members are still waiting for justice.

///

Listen him talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYR3xJw2Nh0
A biographical Hindi film based on his life titled, Shahid (2013) starring Rajkummar Rao, was directed by Hansal Mehta and produced by Anurag Kashyap. A must watch.
Excerpted by MOI from a contribution by Mahtab Alam, who is a civil rights activist and writer. His twitter handle is @MahtabNama
Photo courtesy: Tehelka
///

• Wikipedia Article - here
• A Grain in My Empty Bowl - Tehelka Article
• A Murder Riddled With Holes - Rana Ayyub Article
• Kafila Article by Mahtab Alam here

Shankar Guha Niyogi

First post goes to Shankar Guha Niyogi:

Shankar Guha Niyogi

• Wikipedia Article
• PUDR Article - People Union for Democratic Rights
• The Hindu Article - The Five legged Elephant
• Mukti Guha Niyogi

The Oppressors and the oppressed

They are the crusaders, fighting for the people of India, trying to create a better place for us, they are not fighting at the borders, but doing a far better and noble job where they are fighting with internal threats for the people of India, they are against the Oppressors, they are fearless, they don't care about oppressor's network or their reach, they are alone in their path, they are not paid for it, Govt. of India doesn't have any money for these crusaders (although it has budget for Sardar Patel Statue, Mars operations and so many other such activities), they are killed and die everyday, but their blood is not wasted, they died for a better cause and God is watching all of these .... the oppressors and the oppressed ....