In Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, the protagonist is prosecuted by an unknown authority that drags him through opaque legal proceedings where the nature of his crime is not revealed, to him or the reader. Such legal bureaucracies that are seemingly far-fetched are not too dissimilar to the trials of students, activists, and academics in India who are charged with sedition or under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Perhaps the account that is most reminiscent of Kafka’s novel is Sagar Abraham-Gonsalves describing the police ransacking their home and confiscating books, computers, and hard drives before arresting Sagar’s father, activist Vernon Gonsalves, in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case. Sagar wrote, “Books were taken down one by one… Any book that had Mao, Naxal or Marx in its name was examined and many of them were taken away as evidence.”
Sagar’s account mirrors the stories of several other students and activists jailed in India in the last decade. Students Alan Shuhaib and Thaha Fazal in Kerala, tribal journalist Vittala Malekudiya in Karnataka, activist Satyanarayana accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, activist Sharjeel Imam in Delhi, and Akhil Gogoi in Assam were all prosecuted for sedition and terror charges. They all have one thing in common – the evidence against them includes the books they read.
Lawyers representing them say that the idea that someone can be charged for possessing books is unacceptable but it happens so frequently that the practice is now normalised. A National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in 2020 held that mere possession of Maoist literature or even support to the banned outfit is not an offence. This has not stopped police across India from filing FIRs based on this. Importantly, in some of the cases, the police have not found supporting evidence or acts of violence or instigation, both of which are crucial for sedition and UAPA charges. The attempt was to somehow use this literature to present a mental map or ideological makeup of the accused instead of hard evidence to link them to crimes and criminal conspiracies against the nation.
In several cases, books discussing Maoism were seized and lodged as evidence to claim that students and activists were actively conspiring with Maoists.
In the chargesheet against Vernon Gonsalves, books such as War and Peace in Junglemahal by Biswajit Roy and the Marathi book Saheb, Aamhala Dusara Desh Dya (Saheb, Give us a Different Country) were recorded as evidence by the Pune police.
A lawyer involved in the case said that books by themselves are not incriminating evidence as they are not banned books. “The books are included in the chargesheet as smokescreen, to build prejudice against the accused. The books cannot be evidence unless they are banned books or found to be highly incriminating,” the lawyer said.
Of these, the Bombay High Court judge Sarang Kotwal picked out and questioned the possession of one of the books – War and Peace in Junglemahal: People. Published in 2012, it is a collection of essays and grassroot voices discussing the Maoist insurrection in West Bengal’s Junglemahal. The book includes essays that are critical of both the Maoists and the government.
Vernon Gonsalves has been accused, along with others arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, of being part of the banned CPI (Maoist). He has also been charged with playing a part in the violence against the Dalit community that was visiting Bhima Koregaon, near Pune, on January 1, 2018. The entire case is built on electronic evidence, the credibility of which has been questioned by cyber experts.
This is not the only time police have targeted and seized books with Marxist or Maoist literature while investigating terror charges. Academic Satyanarayana, whose residence was also raided in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case, said that the police asked him why he had books on Mao and Marx on his bookshelf.
Similarly, in the case against Akhil Gogoi, who leads the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), one of the outfits instrumental in organising the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Registry of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, NIA officials reported the seizure of books on communism, Marxism and socialism, and titles related to Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin. Akhil’s lawyer Santanu Borthakur said that the NIA was trying to connect the recovery of Maoist literature with other evidence like ‘attending a meeting of Maoists’.
In two cases, in Kerala and Karnataka, police officials seized reports on contemporary topics and lodged them as evidence in UAPA cases.
Kerala students Alan Shuhaib and Thaha Fazal spent 10 months in custody in 2020 after they were accused of being active members of CPI (Maoist). But the police evidence in the case was not limited only to books published by the CPI (Maoist), it also included journalist Rahul Pandita’s best-selling Hello Bastar, a historical account of left-wing extremism in India; a book on former Naxalite leader Mundoor Ravunni; a pamphlet exhorting Indonesians to join a fight against their rulers; a page with writings, including from ecologist Madhav Gadgil, in support of the people of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir; and a note supporting the call to demolish illegal apartment complexes in Maradu, near Kochi.
The NIA court hearing Alan and Thaha’s bail plea noted that most of the literature was available in public and that issues like the Maradu flat demolition, Madhav Gadgil report or the Kashmir issue “deal with contemporary social and political issues” that were widely discussed and debated. Granting bail, the court said that books, slogans, and diary entries are not evidence for UAPA charges without overt acts of violence or instigation.
In the court case against Adivasi journalism student Vittala Malekudiya in Karnataka, the list of materials presented by the Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) to claim that he was a member of the dreaded Communist Party of India (Maoist-Leninist) People’s War included pamphlets from an environmental organisation, newspaper cuttings about Naxals, and a book about Bhagat Singh. Though the ANF did not have any incriminating material, Vittala was charged with sedition, conspiracy, and terror, and had to endure a nine-year legal struggle.
Speaking to TNM, Vittala’s lawyer Dinesh Ulepady said, “Vittala was the first journalism graduate from the Adivasi Malekudiya community. We argued in court that the items seized belonged to him but there is nothing wrong in keeping paper cuttings on reports about Naxals and books on Bhagat Singh.”
Vittala was acquitted by the district court in Dakshina Kannada in October 2021 and judge BB Jakati, pronouncing the judgement, pointed out that having books on Bhagat Singh and newspaper cuttings are not in violation of the law.
There are parallels between Vittala’s ordeal and that of activist Sharjeel Imam, who is currently in jail over a speech he made during the CAA and NRC protests. In its chargesheet, the Delhi police accused Sharjeel of being “highly radicalised and religiously bigoted” based on the books and research he read for his M Phil thesis.
The police claimed that for his thesis ‘Exodus before Partition: The Attack on Muslims of Bihar in 1946’, Sharjeel read several books discussing collective violence in India. Among them was the book Forms of Collective Violence, Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide in Modern India by Paul R Brass, which observed that violence was not a result of spontaneous outbreaks of passion but an act by organised groups.
“During his thesis, he came across a number of books which made his mind that Muslims have been oppressed for a very long time and affirmed his religious bigotry which lacks complete faith in democratic and constitutional values (sic),” the chargesheet by the police read.
Like in Vittala’s case, Sharjeel’s lawyer Ahmad Ibrahim told TNM that Sharjeel is a scholar and that incriminating him for reading books is wrong. “He reads a lot even now in jail. We are saying that there is no incriminating evidence in the chargesheet and that is why books have been cited. It is to create a bias against Sharjeel,” the lawyer said.
It is to be noted that Sharjeel is facing charges including sedition and under the UAPA. He was initially booked for a speech he had delivered during anti-CAA protests on January 16, 2020, at Aligarh Muslim University, a prominent minority institution. He had called for a blockade of a narrow corridor that connects mainland India to the northeastern states to force the government to listen to the protesters’ demands.
The News Minute's reporting is possible with support from Report for the World, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project.