Hany Babu

Hany Babu got bail in December last year.

Babu has written to DU to reinstate him.Like the other 15 accused, the former Delhi University professor was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged Maoist links and accused of plotting to incite violence and conspiring against the state following the Bhima Koregaon violence of January 1, 2018.

Babu, who got bail in December 2025, says he and his family “are still trying to find our feet”. He has found a place to stay in Navi Mumbai (his bail conditions restrict him to Mumbai), and has been busy getting his bank and Aadhaar accounts linked with a new phone number since authorities seized his phone. He plans to get his eye and gall bladder surgeries done as recommended by doctors. Babu has written to DU to reinstate him. He applied to court on January 29 to allow him to visit his mother in Kerala.

P Varavara Rao

The poet-writer-activist has been living in Mumbai with his wife since he got bail on medical grounds in February 2022. He suffers from a range of age-related ailments, including appendicitis and dental issues, and has had hernia and cataract surgery since coming out of prison. He is also suffering from early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Rao is suffering from early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Since he has a health card in Telangana, he is entitled to free treatment in the state. His application to court to be allowed to move to his home state for his treatment remains pending. Rao spends most of his time reading and writing.

Sudhir Dhawale

Dhawale says “not much has changed” for him after walking out of prison in January 2025 because “the whole country has changed into a jail”. The actor-activist says there is no space left for expressing one’s opinion, and that one cannot even write an opinion disagreeing with the government on social media for fear of police action. “I may be out of prison, but my thoughts are still under capture,” he says.

Sudhir Dhawale walked out of prison in January last year.

He spends his time writing and continues as editor of the bi-monthly Marathi magazine Vidrohi.

Rona Wilson

Wilson, who was released from prison in January 2025, says he has had to “start from scratch”. He was slated to travel to the UK in 2019 for a PhD programme at the University of Surrey, but was forced to drop the plan after being arrested in 2018.

The activist-researcher says that it is “insanely expensive” to stay in Mumbai — as directed by the court while granting him bail — and that he had “25 failed attempts” to find a house on rent in the city before finally finding a place through a person “known in the area”.

Wilson, who was released from prison in January 2025, says he has had to “start from scratch”.

Opening a new bank account was another struggle, he says, without a local address. He says that till June last year, he survived on cash from his family and friends, who would travel back and forth from Mumbai. They have been supporting him financially as he looks for research and writing work. He says that people, including some of his friends, still fear engaging with him, but what keeps him afloat “is your conviction and all those bravehearts who have stood with you throughout — people, organisations and the unmitigated solidarities.”

Mahesh Raut

The 38-year-old was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on merits in September 2023 but remained behind bars for two more years, after a stay by the Supreme Court pending a hearing on the NIA’s appeal against his release. In 2025, the SC granted him interim bail on medical grounds. Bail conditions set by the HC and the trial court curtailed his movement.

Last month, Raut had sought to travel to an ayurvedic centre in Kerala for treatment of his rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren’s Syndrome, but the trial court turned down his plea, saying he can get treated in Mumbai. He is also required to visit the local police station once a week.

Raut is also required to visit the local police station once a week.

Raut, a researcher and a former Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow, had undertaken research work while in jail. Through his interactions with under co-inmates, Raut did his research on the “socio-economic and other determinations” of those booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, where the cases were filed out of family pressure in consensual relationships.

Vernon Gonsalves

The trade unionist and academic who walked out of prison on bail in August 2023, laments “being stuck at home” in Mumbai due to his bail conditions. While granting bail to him and Arun Ferreira on July 28, 2023, the Supreme Court had ordered that their phones “be paired with that of the Investigating Officer (IO) of the NIA to enable him, at any given time, to identify the appellants’ exact location” — a condition that has led him to limit his interactions with friends.

Vernon Gonsalves walked out of prison on bail in August 2023

The NIA IO has changed multiple times since then, but, he says, he doesn’t want his friends “to get in trouble” and can sense that most of them are reluctant to interact with him. Due to his limited engagement with the world, he adds, he has “not been able to do much professionally”.

Arun Ferreira

The lawyer, who received bail along with Gonsalves in August 2023, says that “of all the bail conditions imposed by the judiciary, the one imposed by the Supreme Court to allow the NIA to track my location at all times is unbearable to live with.” He adds that the bail condition imposed by the trial court that disallows him from contacting or communicating with his co-accused “becomes extremely difficult to implement as all the co-accused face a common trial. We need to communicate with each other in court.”

Arun Ferreira continues to work as a lawyer.

Ferreira continues to work as a lawyer. However, due to compulsory attendance on court dates and weekly attendance at the local police station, “thorough commitment becomes difficult,” he says.

Sudha Bharadwaj

The lawyer-activist, who was granted default bail by the Bombay High Court in November 2021, says her bail conditions confine her to Mumbai, “an alien city”. “Since I have neither a home nor work here, this has been tough for me,” she says. “Market rents are sky high and it’s only because friends here have been generous enough to let me stay in their houses that I have survived the past four years.”

Bharadwaj used to work as a trade unionist and lawyer in Chhattisgarh. Since she is unable to travel there, she is currently working with a Senior Advocate who practises labour law.

Sudha Bharadwaj used to work as a trade unionist and lawyer in Chhattisgarh.

In 2024, Bharadwaj applied for court permission to meet her daughter in Kolkata, where she studies, on the grounds that the MSc student suffers from General Anxiety Disorder and required the presence and support of her mother. However, on January 2, 2025, a Special Sessions court in Mumbai denied her permission on the ground that her application to be with her daughter was “sans any satisfactory and trustworthy reason”.

Anand Teltumbde

The scholar-activist who was released from prison on bail in November 2022, says he only moved from “a small jail to a bigger jail”. The bail conditions, which prevent him from moving outside Maharashtra without the court’s permission, have created “a terrible rupture in life”, he says. A lot of his friends have stopped speaking to him out of fear, and he has to make frequent visits to the court for hearings in the case and to apply whenever he has to go out of Maharashtra. He has lost his job as a management professor at the Goa Institute of Management, and the financial strain from fighting the case has left his life “totally disturbed”, he says.

A lot of his friends have stopped speaking to Anand out of fear.

With “nothing to do”, he has been writing prolifically, having produced six books — Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar (2024) and The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir; The Caste Con Census; Dalits and the Indian Constitution; Whither Human Rights in India (edited); and Dorahe par Dalit: Hindutva aur Udarikaran ki Dohri Maar in 2025 — and at least one article every day, he estimates, in the last three years.

Gautam Navlakha

In December 2025, the Bombay High Court permitted Navlakha to move from Mumbai to Delhi till the trial in the Elgaar Parishad case began. The human rights activist and former journalist, who was granted bail in 2023, is now back in his two-bedroom South Delhi apartment filled with books that he shares with his partner Sahba. He starts most conversations by recounting that he was away from home for five years, 10 months, 18 days.

As per bail conditions, he has surrendered his passport to the Special NIA Court in Mumbai.

As per bail conditions, he has surrendered his passport to the Special NIA Court in Mumbai.

He cannot move out of Delhi without the court’s permission and must mark hazari at the Kalkaji police station every Saturday morning. Navlakha says he is “ecstatic and looking forward to life in Delhi, a city that he loves. “Now that I am home, my journey begins now,” he says.

Shoma Sen

Sen, who received bail in April 2024, says she is glad to be back home in Nagpur but unhappy that she cannot leave Maharashtra due to her bail conditions. The six-year jail stint worsened her osteoarthritis and she now has trouble walking for too long and taking the stairs.

Sen shares that she feels like she is “under surveillance”.

A retired college professor, Sen says she has always had an interest in social work but is now hesitant because her involvement would bring scrutiny from the police and media. She shares that she feels like she is “under surveillance”. The monthly trips to Mumbai for the case hearings also take a toll on her health and finances, she says.

Jyoti Jagtap

One of the three women accused in the case, the 39-year-old cultural artist, who was earlier associated with the Kabir Kala Manch, was released on interim bail granted by the Supreme Court in November 2025. Her bail conditions include marking attendance at the police station near Pune once a week and restrictions on travelling outside the state. She awaits a final hearing in the Supreme Court on her bail plea while nursing a knee ligament injury she suffered in jail.

Jyoti Jagtap was released in November 2025

 

And then there is Surendra Gadling

Surendra Gadling remains the only accused in custody.

“I have been in jail longer than most of my clients,” 57-year-old lawyer Surendra Gadling often jokes to his family.

Of the 16 arrested in the 2018 Elgaar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case, Gadling remains the only accused in custody, with his bail plea pending in the Bombay High Court. While 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy passed away in custody in 2021, the remaining 14 are out on bail.

A year after Gadling was arrested in the Elgaar case by the Pune Police, in 2019, the Maharashtra Police arrested him in a three-year-old case of alleged arson in Surjagarh, Gadchiroli, in 2016. Police alleged that he played a role in the conspiracy to set ablaze 76 vehicles carrying iron ore from mines. While those arrested in the Surjagarh case were released on bail the same year, Gadling’s bail plea is being heard before the Supreme Court, with the trial yet to begin

As the Elgaar case dragged on — the charges are yet to be framed and the trial hasn’t started despite court orders — one by one, the other accused were granted bail, with cultural activists Ramesh Gaichor and Sagar Gorkhe the latest to be released on January 27.

Gadling’s wife Minal, 51, a tuition teacher who lives in Nagpur, says, “Now with only him in jail, he is happy for the others. He keeps his spirits up knowing he has not done anything wrong. The courage that comes from knowing this truth keeps him and us going.” Gadling has two children — a son who is a lawyer and a daughter who is studying.

Gadling was arrested on June 6, 2018, from Nagpur, with the Pune police blaming him and the others for inciting violence that took place on January 1, at Bhima Koregaon, around 30 km from Pune. Bhima Koregaon is the site of a memorial pillar commemorating an 1818 battle in which the British army, with significant participation from Dalit soldiers, defeated the Peshwa regime. The anniversary is marked every year on January 1 and draws a large number of visitors.

On January 1, 2018, unknown persons attacked those attending the memorial. In the violence that followed and spread, a resident of a nearby village was killed. The local police initially filed an FIR against right-wing organisation leaders Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide. Soon after, however, the Pune police filed another FIR, blaming an event called Elgaar Parishad held a day earlier, on December 31, 2017, for allegedly inciting the violence. It was subsequently claimed that the event was a conspiracy to further the activities of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The Pune police had then carried out nationwide searches and arrested Gadling, along with the others, and claimed to have seized incriminating documents from their electronic devices. The accused have relied on a forensic investigation carried out by a US-based digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, to claim that malware was used to plant what police claimed was “evidence” on their devices.

Gadling’s associates say he was targeted for his past work in defending those facing charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act — a charge he now faces — in the Naxal-dominated areas of Gadchiroli and Chandrapur.

The son of a Dalit labourer and rickshaw puller, Gadling first began working as an apprentice in the railways, but soon gravitated towards a career in law to become the first lawyer in his family.

As a young lawyer in the trial courts of Nagpur in the early 90s, Gadling would often meet his clients — many from the Dalit and Adivasi communities in neighbouring districts — for whom access to a lawyer was a challenge. “These were people who could barely meet the expenses to visit their family members in jail, forget affording a good lawyer. Along with his regular practice in criminal and civil cases, he began taking up their cases, pro bono or with whatever they could manage to pay him,” says Minal.

She recalls that many undertrials went for years without having a lawyer to represent them. Once word spread about Gadling, their family members would travel from far-flung areas to Nagpur. “Now with him in jail, I understand how difficult it is even for the families of those arrested. Even to ensure that they have the basic necessities in jail — clothes, medicines,” she says, recalling how Gadling would send her to buy essentials for the women undertrials he was representing.

He soon made a name for himself. Lawyers who began working with him as interns and junior associates recall how there was always an audience to watch him cross-examine a witness. He often used music and theatre, which he picked up in school and college, to good effect.

“All his juniors would sit with him as he prepared a case, reading chargesheets, arguing strategies. Before the court, however, he would have an impromptu performance, reciting a poem, or a line from a Marathi ballad. His booming voice could be heard across courtrooms. There was always an audience of lawyers waiting in the courtroom to watch and learn from him,” says lawyer Jagdish Meshram, who worked with Gadling from 2008, and subsequently branched out as an independent lawyer.

Meshram recalls that many of the undertrials in Gadchiroli jails would be villagers booked as Maoist sympathisers or supporters, and Gadling was successful in getting acquittals in many such cases of wrongful arrests. But it was his defence of G N Saibaba, the former Delhi University professor, who was arrested in 2014 for alleged Maoist links, that caught the attention of the authorities.

Gadling had also represented activist Arun Ferreira, another of the Elgaar accused, in earlier cases of alleged Maoist links. He had also represented the victim in the Khairlanji massacre of 2006, where four members of a Dalit family were killed.

Minal says through all his troubles – his health problems, his fight to access his ayurvedic medicines which were allegedly denied to him in jail despite a court order, the deaths of his mother and sister-in-law — Gadling never let his friends or family know what he was going through.

In 2021, when he was released for a few days on interim bail, he had visited the Nagpur court where he practised and, like he often did, regaled an audience of lawyers with a song written by co-accused Gaichor on the difficulties of prison life.

“When I was outside (jail), I did some work on human rights, but when I went to jail, I realised it was nothing; there is a need for a lot more,” he told them.