Nihalsing Rathod

Elgar Parishad Accused, Their Lawyers Write to SC’s Committee on Pegasus Spyware Targeting

On January 3, the committee issued a public notice urging people to contact them in case they have reasons to believe that their phones were compromised using the malware.

Mumbai: Several human rights defenders and academics implicated in the Elgar Parishad case and their lawyers have sent their representation to the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Committee alleging that their phones were infected by the vicious Pegasus malware.

In July last year, an international media consortium, including The Wire, had revealed that Pegasus spyware, sold by Israel’s NSO Group, was used to infect phones of several leading activists, journalists and politicians in the country. The investigative reports had prompted the Supreme Court to set up a committee to investigate the snooping allegations.

On January 2, the committee issued a public notice urging people to contact them in case they have reasons to believe that their phones were compromised using the malware.

Nihalsingh Rathod, a Nagpur-based lawyer who is representing many accused in the Elgar Parishad case, has sent a written representation to the committee. Along with him, another lawyer Jagdish Meshram and a member of the cultural group Kabir Kala Manch Rupali Jadhav have also written to the committee. All three of them were some of the first to be informed about the potential breach by the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab as early as 2019.

Hany Babu Musaliyarveettil Tharayil, an associate professor from Delhi University (DU), and lawyer and academic Sudha Bharadwaj too have sent their representations. Both Hany Babu and Bharadwaj are named as accused in the Elgar Parishad case. Bharadwaj was released on bail last month after spending over three years in jail. Hany Babu is in jail and the representation was sent through his wife Jenny Rowena, also an associate professor at DU’s Miranda college.

Also read: Rona Wilson’s iPhone Infected With Pegasus Spyware, Says New Forensic Report

Rathod, in his application, mentions that he began receiving video calls on WhatsApp in early 2019. These calls were from unknown international numbers. “On trying to answer the same, the call would stand disconnected. Irritated with the repeated instances, I preferred to block those numbers using provisions made in the WhatsApp application. However, there were repeated calls from different international numbers which prompted me to lodge a complaint officially with WhatsApp,” he writes in the application. He also filed an official complaint with WhatsApp informing them of the “suspicious activities,” he states.

Rathod was not alone. Minal Gadling, wife of Surendra Gadling – arrested in the Elgar Parishad case – and Meshram also continued to get such suspicious calls. Rights activist, writer and actor Vira Sathidar, who died in April last year, too complained of similar problems.

Rathod, in the letter, says his suspicion was finally confirmed when he received a call from John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher of the Citizen Lab, and was informed about the malware. Jadhav, Meshram, Gadling and Sathidar too were contacted by Citizen Lab.

Rathod says since then, he has been handling several sensitive cases, including that of scholar-activist G.N. Saibaba, who is serving a life term in the Nagpur Central Prison for alleged links with Maoists, and could have become an easy target. “I believe that my phone was intercepted for accessing the privileged communication and legal strategies drawn on behalf of my clients,” he writes.

Rona Wilson, a Delhi-based prisoners’ rights activist and one of the first persons to be arrested in the Elgar Parishad case, made a representation before the committee through his lawyer R. Sathyanarayanan.

In the letter, Sathyanarayanan mentions the findings of Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm, that recently concluded that Wilson’s phone, an Apple make, was not just selected for surveillance by a client of Israel’s NSO Group but was also successfully compromised on many occasions. This report was prepared in consultation with Amnesty International’s Security Lab.

Earlier, Arsenal Consulting had come out with another explosive that pointed to the use of the NetWire RAT (Remote Access Trojan) on Wilson’s computer for both surveillance and incriminating document delivery.

Rights activist Vernon Gonsalves, lawyer Arun Ferreira and academics Anand Teltumbde and Shoma Sen have also sent their individual representations through their respective lawyers.

In July last year, The Wire – in collaboration with 16 other media organisations – had revealed names of 174 people who were either persons of interest or forensically identified as having been targeted by clients of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Those on the list include heads of state, political figures, activists, students, lawyers and journalists, among others.

The France-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories had accessed a leaked database of 50,000 numbers who may have been targeted for surveillance by clients of NSO Group. Since the Israeli company says that the advanced spyware is only sold to “vetted governments”, it is safe to assume that these individuals were targets or potential targets of government or military agencies.

The news organisations working on the Pegasus Project were independently able to identify the owners of over 1,500 numbers across at least 10 countries. A small cross-section of these phones was forensically examined to find traces of Pegasus.

Amnesty International, in collaboration with The Wire, was able to forensically examine the phones of 10 Indians, all of which showed signs of either an attempted hack or a successful compromise.

Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’

While the exercise is carried out on the Union home ministry’s directive, the discretion of adding names and profiling people is entirely that of the state.

Mumbai: Even as several human rights activists and lawyers in Maharashtra face harassment, arrests and police cases, the state police has made things worse by adding them to the list of “enemies” as mentioned under the Union home ministry’s “Union War Book”.

In a detailed district-wise operation, the state’s home department along with the intelligence department has identified many human rights activists, lawyers, and academics and has begun the work of profiling them, almost like criminals, adding them to the ‘Union War Book’. This document, maintained by the Union home ministry, dictates the exact role each government ministry, department and wing will play in times of war but also has a directory of sorts of those it considers to be “enemies of the state”.

While the exercise is carried out on the Union home ministry’s directive, the discretion of adding names and profiling people is entirely that of the state.

The profiling began early July, when a few junior officials from the Nagpur police came knocking on the door of city-based lawyer Nihalsing Rathod. The constabulary, directed by the Nagpur Special branch, had carried a pile of papers, which mentioned the names of several persons and the and categories under which they had to be evaluated. Rathod, an established human rights lawyer who is representing several persons arrested in the ongoing Elgar Parishad case, was categorised as a “caste social conflict agents’ provocateurs”.

Rathod isn’t alone in the list. Surendra Gadling, also a Nagpur-based lawyer who was arrested for his alleged role in the Elgar Parishad case, his wife Minal Gadling, his associate lawyer Harshal Lingayat are also mentioned under this category. Gadling’s co-accused and a former professor at the Nagpur University, Shoma Sen, also finds a mention in the list.

The list says the lawyers should be profiled for being associated with the Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL). Most lawyers who were arrested and questioned in connection with the Elgar Parishad case are directly associated with the association. During the Devendra Fadnavis-led government, the organisation was accused of being a “Maoist front”. The lawyers have, however, denied the charges.

These activists and lawyers have been added under ‘Category C’ of the Union War Book, which calls for “surveillance at all times for as long as may be necessary”.

The ‘suspect list’ of the Union war book.

Rathod says three constables had visited his office on July 7 and demanded all his legal documents, including his Aadhaar card and bank details. “The proforma had a list of documents. They asked to check them all. Along with my documents, they also wanted me to hand over details of my friends and relatives,” Rathod told The Wire.

Rathod was also asked about his work and his political and social views. “Are you casteist?” one of them asked. The police personnel also wanted to find out if Rathod is or was likely to take an “anti-government stand”. Bizarre as they may be, these questions were all mentioned in the proforma that the officials had carried.

The list of 33 questions included details of educational qualifications, social media accounts, passport number, PAN and Aadhar card details, political leanings, names of family members, locations they visit regularly, physical appearance, birthmarks among others. “These questions are meant for those with criminal antecedents. The local police persons who had visited me had no idea what that form meant. I simply refused to respond to them,” Rathod shared.

The lawyer has already sent a letter to the Maharashtra chief minister and home minister, seeking an explanation for why he was placed on the list.

The Union War Book, which has existed since the colonial era, is periodically revised, depending on the security concerns of the time. The book is a compilation of voluminous documents that mention minute details of security threats, ground realities and the essential state preparedness at the time of security crisis.

An annexure to the book, accessed by The Wire, lists 18 different categories of “suspects”. Some categories include “known agents/ sympathisers of Pakistan among non-Muslims”, “known agents/ sympathisers of Pakistan among Muslims”, “LTTE/ Sri Lankan militants”, “Naxalites and allied left-wing extremists”, “communal elements amongst Hindus/ Muslims”.

Annexure A, which lists the different categories of suspects.

A way to harass, say lawyers

Though unclear why lawyers and rights activists have been added to the list, Lingayat, whose name also appears in the list, says the aim of the exercise is only to harass them. “The very nature of our (lawyers’) work is being in the public domain. Who we defend and our line of arguments are all in the court’s record. Still, the government has from time to time, targeted us for the work we do,” Lingayat feels. He and Gadling have worked on several cases registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Lingayat and Rathod both feel that their profiling should be looked at as just an addition to their ongoing harassment. The Pegasus Project, a consortium of 16 international media houses, of which The Wire is also a part, had recently revealed that the phones of Rathod, Gadling and his wife Minal, Sen along with several others charged for their alleged role in the Elgar Parishad case could have been potentially targeted by the military-grade spyware owned by the Israeli company NSO Group.

Lingayat’s email id, on the other hand, was allegedly morphed and used for malware attacks on Gadling’s laptop. Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm, in its recent report, uncovered details of malware attacks made on Gadling’s computer using email IDs of persons close to him. These emails were used to plant documents, which later became a part of the “evidence” used against Gadling and 15 others arrested in the Elgar Parishad case.

From time to time, the “requirements” of the Union War Book are tweaked and the ‘threats’ are redefined. Sources in the state home department said that the recent exercise was done on the Union home ministry’s directive and is being carried out across the state.

The list accessed by Rathod and later reviewed by The Wire mentions names of only those residing in the Nagpur region. “There are multiple lists drawn for other districts too,” a senior bureaucrat, on the condition of anonymity, told The Wire.

The list of people in the Nagpur region identifies a disproportionately high number of persons from the Muslim community and Bahujan caste locations.

Among other people under watch are “Hawala operators”, “communal agent provocateurs”, and “other anti-social elements”. The Wire contacted several people mentioned in the list. Most of them said they have not been contacted by any police official yet.

Senior lawyer Anirudha Dube, whose name appears under the “caste provocateurs” list, told The Wire that he was unsure why the police would profile him for such a list. “I handle regular criminal and civil cases,” he said. Dube has been a member of the Bar Council multiple times and is a well-known senior lawyer in Nagpur.

Arvind Sovani, a Nagpur-based college professor, and founder of Bhumkal Naxal Virodhi Sanghatan, is also mentioned in the list of suspects to be profiled. Sovani, when contacted by The Wire, said he did not know about the list. He declined to comment further.

An order issued by Nagpur special branch deputy commissioner of police Basawraj Teli states that all “suspicious persons” are to be monitored and profiled before July 10. The notice mentions that this is a bi-yearly exercise. The Wire contacted Teli for his comment, who first claimed he was busy and later did not reply to multiple phone calls and messages sent to him. The story will be updated as and when Teli responds.

Before embarking on their field visits, every police person on special duty has to be imparted ‘special training’. “Senior police officers should impart training to subordinate officers for at least 100 hours every year on the matters of new laws and challenges,” one of the notices, issued by ADG (Training and Special Units) Sanjay Kumar on June 4, states.

Elgar Parishad Case: NIA Summons Three Lawyers for Questioning

Among those summoned are Nihalsing Rathod, the defence lawyer for some of the accused in the case, and Viplav Teltumbde.

Mumbai: After questioning several academics and activists, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has now issued summons to three lawyers in the Elgar Parishad case. Among the three lawyers summoned to appear before the agency’s Mumbai office on August 28 are Nihalsing Rathod, Viplav Teltumbde and a Nagpur-based lawyer who doesn’t want his identity to be revealed.

Rathod, a 33-year old Nagpur-based lawyer who is engaged as a defence lawyer for several accused arrested in the case, says he received a call from the NIA followed by a notice sent through an email. Until 2018, Rathod had worked as a junior lawyer to Surendra Gadling, an expert in anti-terror laws and a prominent lawyer in Nagpur. After Gadling was arrested on June 6, 2018, in the Elgar Parishad case, Rathod represented him and other arrested accused.

Defence lawyers, by virtue of their relationship with their clients, are privy to information and strategies that are crucial for the case. In this situation, summoning Rathod for questioning not only makes him vulnerable but also his clients, he says. Rathod told The Wire that he has sought time to appear before the NIA since one of his relatives is seriously ill and he needs to be available in his hometown in case of an emergency. He has been asked to appear before the NIA’s office in Mumbai at 11 am on Friday.

Rathod is known for his work in the field of human rights. Rathod identifies as an “Ambedkarite activist” and belongs to a denotified tribe. His work has largely focussed on the issues of nomadic and denotified tribes in Maharashtra. Along with being associated with many civil rights organisations, Rathod also co-founded ‘Sangharsh Wahini Bhatke Vimukt Sangharsh Parishad’, an organisation working for socio-political rights of nomadic and denotified tribes.

Advocate Nihalsing Rathod. Photo: The Wire

This is not the first time that investigating agencies have trained their focus on Rathod. His name first emerged in a letter that the case’s previous investigating agency, Pune police, had claimed to have found from another accused in the case Sudha Bharadwaj, also an advocate. The letter, according to the state police was written by “comrade Sudha” to “comrade Prakash” elaborating the readiness of several lawyers to take “responsibility and risk” and fight cases of those implicated in cases of Naxalism. In the letter, Bharadwaj purportedly wrote that the lawyers, including Rathod, were ready to act as “couriers”, gathering information from “comrades attending court cases”.

The letter also mentions Viplav Teltumbde, who has also been summoned for questioning.

Defence lawyers in the case, however, had denied the police’s allegations and had in fact identified inconsistencies in the letter. Several words in those letters, allegedly found from Bharadwaj and another accused and prisoners’ rights activist Rona Wilson, were in Marathi. Neither Bharadwaj nor Wilson speak or write Marathi.

Alleged letter written by Sudha Bhardwaj by The Wire on Scribd

In the past year, it was revealed that Rathod was one of more than 100 journalists and human rights activists in India who were targeted for surveillance by operators using Israeli firm NSO’s spyware Pegasus. Rathod’s email account was also attacked by a malware and a detailed joint investigation conducted by Amnesty International’s digital team based in Berlin and The Citizen Lab, a research organisation which works out of the University of Toronto, found that the email was part of a larger surveillance conspiracy “specially crafted to bait journalists or activists”.

Also Read: Bhima Koregaon: Amid Demands For Fresh Probe, A Hard Look at the Case’s Discrepancies

Why is advocate Viplav Teltumbde summoned?

Viplav says the only reason why he is frequently a target of the investigative agencies is his family name. “Earlier, it would be because of my uncle Milind Teltumbde and now, in this case, it is because of another uncle, Anand Teltumbde,” he says. Milind Teltumbde is believed to be a top-rung leader of the banned CPI (Maoist) organisation and has allegedly been involved in several underground movements since 1996. Anand Teltumbde is a senior academic and civil rights activist who was recently arrested in connection with the Elgar Parishad case.

“The last time I was in touch with Milind kaaka was in 1996. That’s the year he left everything behind and went away from the family. Since then, I haven’t been in touch with him,” Viplav says. He continues to live in his family house in Wani. Milind and Anand Teltumbde’s mother also lives with him.

Viplav Teltumbde. Photo: By arrangement

Viplav, a practising lawyer since 2006, was arrested in 2004 while he was a final-year law student in Yavatmal district of northeastern Maharashtra. Viplav was accused of involvement in the “Naxal movement” and booked in five separate cases—one in Wani, Yavatmal district, another in Chandrapur and two cases in Bhandara district. It took him three years to get his name cleared in all the cases.

“Those were sedition charges levelled against me and several other students in the region. I was arrested and kept in Nagpur central prisons for three months while I was still a student,” he recalls. His cases were handled by advocate Gadling.

While no new cases were registered against him since 2007, Viplav claims harassment by the state police has not stopped. “In the past two years, particularly after the Elgar Parishad investigation began, the police have targeted my clients and forced them to give information about me. Some of them were also tortured,” he alleges.

Viplav had defended civil rights activist and lawyer Arun Ferreira in 2011. Ferreira, a member of the Deshbhakti Yuva Manch (Forum for Patriotic Youth), was accused of being involved in Naxal activities and arrested in 2006. He was, later, acquitted of all charges. Viplav says he was in the team of defence lawyers who had taken up Ferreira’s case. After being acquitted of all charges, Ferreira went on to study law and was practising in Mumbai when he was once again arrested in 2018 in the Elgar Parishad case.

The recent summons sent by NIA is puzzling, Viplav says, as he has not been involved either in the Elgar Parishad event or in the defence team following the arrests of activists and lawyers. “I hadn’t even visited Bhima Koregaon until recently. In 2019, out of curiosity, I decided to visit Bhima Koregaon to just find out what is this place all about,” he says.

Also Read: Elgar Parishad Case: NIA Raids Miranda House Teacher Jenny Rowena’s Residence

Elgar Parishad case

The first round of arrests in the Elgar Parishad case had begun in June 2018, with the arrests of Sudhir Dhawale, a writer and Mumbai-based Dalit rights activist, Surendra Gadling, a UAPA expert and lawyer from Nagpur, Mahesh Raut, a young activist on displacement issues from Gadchiroli, Shoma Sen, a university professor and head of the English literature department at Nagpur University, Rona Wilson, a Delhi-based prisoners’ rights activist.

In the second round of arrests in August 2018, advocate Arun Ferreira, advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, writer Varavara Rao and Vernon Gonsalves were taken into custody.

Top row (from left): Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut; Middle row: Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Varavara Row; Bottom row: Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira and Rona Wilson

In November that year, the Pune police filed its first chargesheet in the case, which ran over 5,000 pages. The police had claimed that those arrested had “active links” with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and had helped organise the ‘Elgar Parishad’ of December 31, 2017, under the banner of the ‘Bhima Koregaon Shaurya Din Prerana Abhiyan’ in Pune.

The police’s case is that this cultural gathering in Pune’s Shaniwarwada area, known to be a predominantly Brahmin hub, had incited Dalit youth across Maharashtra against the Bharatiya Janata Party and ‘Brahmin-oriented Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’, leading to violent retaliation across the state. The speeches given at the Elgar Parishad were allegedly inflammatory, and carried the intention of “harming the democratic fabric of the country”.

A supplementary chargesheet was filed later in February 2019 and the state police had claimed that fugitive Maoist leader Ganapathy is the mastermind of the Elgar Parishad.

Also Read: Elgar Parishad Case Accused Take Devendra Fadnavis, Two Hindutva Leaders to Court

While the initial investigation was handled by the Pune police, as soon as the BJP government fell, the Ministry of Home Affairs suddenly transferred the case to the NIA in January. After taking the case over, the NIA has arrested academics Anand Teltumbde and Hany Babu and activist Gautam Navlakha.

So far, 12 people – all activists, lawyers and academics – have been arrested in the case so far. The accused insist that they are being implicated in the case, while rights organisations have criticised the government’s actions as stifling dissent.

‘Attack on Varavara Rao Is an Attack on All of Us’: Young Poets Urge Release of Activist

“It is clear that Rao is only being kept in jail by virtue of him being a poet who questions the powers-that-be.”

New Delhi: A group of contemporary Indian poets have written a public statement urging the release of poet and activist Varavara Rao, who was recently shifted to a hospital from a Mumbai jail following a pitched campaign to ensure treatment for him.

“We…state categorically that as young poets of this nation, we see the attack on Rao as an attack on all of us, our minds, our pens and our views,” the statement reads.

In 2018, Varavara Rao was arrested for his alleged role in the Elgar Parishad case. The poets have alleged that first the Pune Police’s and then the NIA’s charges of him ‘trying to incite violence in Bhima Koregaon’ are false.

Also read: As Varavara Rao’s Health Worsens in Jail, Family Alleges Severe Negligence by Authorities

Rao, 81, had fallen ill in jail a few months ago and has reportedly not recovered. According to his family, his speech is slurred and he is hallucinating, and he is unable to take care of himself.

Stressing on how important Rao’s contributions to literature and especially Telangana’s literary landscape is, the poets highlighted the current situation in which he is in, drawing attention to the number of times he has been arrested under flimsy charges and then acquitted.

The full text of the statement, along with the names of the signatories, is below:

“We the undersigned express our solidarity with people’s poet Varavara Rao, condemn his arbitrary arrest under draconian charges like UAPA and urge the authorities to release him immediately.

“Varavara Rao is a world-renowned poet, journalist and literary critic from Telangana who founded the Revolutionary Writers Association popularly known as Virasam. Throughout history, he has been hounded and arrested in various false charges by various governments and later been acquitted in all the cases. This only goes on to suggest that his revolutionary writings have always made the ones in power uncomfortable and they have always been threatened by the power of his verses. Ideally, a poet names the nameless without actually taking their name and for the ones in power to arrest or implicate poets, they need to accept that they are the ones being talked about in those poems.

Also read: Chained Muse: Notes from Prison by Varavara Rao

“In 2018, Varavara Rao was arrested for his alleged role in the ‘Elgar Parishad case’, on false charges of ‘trying to incite violence in Bhima Koregaon’. He has not been offered a fair trial in the last two years and has been imprisoned for an unjust length of time, along with other public-spirited activists, writers and advocates.

“He is 80 years old and according to the press note issued by his family under the title “Don’t kill Varavara Rao in jail”, he is seriously ill and has been in poor health ever since he was shifted to JJ Hospital in an unconscious state earlier in May. His co-prisoner also said he needed immediate help for his physical and neurological issues.

“It is clear that Rao is only being kept in jail by virtue of him being a poet who questions the powers-that-be. While we as young poets not only understand the value and importance of speaking for the people and questioning the ones in power, we take it as a responsibility, to uphold. It is because of public poets like Varavara Rao that we, the young poets are able to write and speak for the society and on other matters.

Also read: ‘No Reason in Law or Conscience to Hold Varavara Rao’, Say Academics in Appeal

“We would also like to state categorically that as young poets of this nation, we see the attack on Rao as an attack on all of us, our minds, our pens and our views. If this suppression of our voices continues, all of us would be left with no voice at all, and there would be only two voices, the voice of the ‘King’ and the voice of the ‘poet employed in the court of the King’! That is the last thing we can afford in our democracy and we must keep alive the spirit of struggle for free thinking to bloom.

“While after enormous outrage by citizens, the news of Varavara Rao being moved to JJ hospital provides some succor, we demand that the appropriate government and judicial authorities immediately attend to all his medical needs, allow his family to be with him and enlarge him on bail. It is only then that we as young poets would rest assured that the current regime would not muzzle our voices when we speak out fearlessly.

“We call upon young fellow poets across the country to stand up for poet Varavara Rao because of who we are able to stretch the reach of our imagination and ideas and write poetry.”

Aseem Sundan
Aamir Aziz
Nabiya Khan
Hussain Haidry
Kaushik Raj
Iqra Khilji
Taikhum Sadiq
Abhijit Khandkar
Rachneet Kaur
Naveen Chourey
Daaniyal
Poojan Sahil
Meghna Prakash
Nandini Gautam
Mandvi Mishra
Yashi Verma
Simran Banga
Sabika Abbas Naqvi
Ankur Sharma
Ridhi Bhutani
Pallavi Mahajan
Nausheen khan
Ghazal Khanna
Megha Rao
Bikram Bumrah
Faisal Khan
Amina Arif
Amy Singh
Smriti Bhoker
Foram Ashish Shah
Kavya Sharma
Sahila
Priya Malik
Puneet Sharma
Nosheen Kapoor
Roshan Abbas
Rajat Thakur
Bappadittya Sarkar
Ramneek Singh
Simar Singh
Soumya Thakur
Nidhie Saini
Ajmal Khan
Vasvi Kejriwal
Devanshi Khetarpal
Suhit Kelkar
Aswin Vijayan
Prashant Parvataneni
Arjun Rajendran
Smita Sahay
Arathy Asok

‘No Reason in Law or Conscience to Hold Varavara Rao’, Say Academics in Appeal

The poet and activist, who is being held at the Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai, is in very poor health according to his family.

New Delhi: Appealing to the government of Maharashtra and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to facilitate the release of poet and activist Varavara Rao to JJ Hospital in view of his reported ill health, academics Romila Thapar and Prabhat Patnaik and others have said ‘there is no reason in law or conscience” to hold him in these circumstances.

Varavara Rao is at the Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai as an accused in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. On Saturday, his family said that the poet’s health had deteriorated and he was delirious. His daughter Pavana told The Wire that Rao has not been provided adequate care in the jail and has started losing coherence.

The signatories of the appeal demanded the immediate transfer of Varavara Rao to JJ Hospital, where he can receive proper treatment. “Rao poses no flight risk and has voluntarily submitted to all investigations for the past 22 months. There is no reason in law or conscience to hold him in circumstances that increase risk to his fragile health,” the appeal says.

Also Read: As Varavara Rao’s Health Worsens in Jail, Family Alleges Severe Negligence by Authorities

They said that even before Rao was arrested, they had been arguing that the investigation should be “impartial, speedy and supervised by the judiciary”. “We have now reached a stage where his life is at stake. To knowingly risk the life of a person in state custody by refusing proper medical treatment would amount to a form of the ‘encounter’, an extra-legal punishment which the State institutions are duty-bound to forego,” the appeal says.

Appealing to the authorities to assure the nation that the Indian state “respects the rule of law and the Constitution”, they should ensure that Varavara Rao receives “immediate and proper treatment” and that his “family is allowed to look after him during his illness”.

The complete statement has been reproduced below.

According to press reports and the statement of his family, the renowned Telugu poet and writer, P. Varavara Rao is extremely ill in Taloja jail. He is suffering from low levels of sodium and potassium as diagnosed by the JJ Hospital, Mumbai, where his treatment was abruptly terminated and he was taken back to Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai. This is a life threatening situation for someone who is 81 years of age, and already suffers from high blood pressure and heart conditions.

We appeal to the Government of Maharashtra and the National Investigation Agency to facilitate the immediate transfer of Mr. Varavara Rao to JJ Hospital where he can receive proper treatment. Mr Rao poses no flight risk and has voluntarily submitted to all investigations for the past 22 months. There is no reason in law or conscience to hold him in circumstances that increase risk to his fragile health.

Even before Mr. Rao was arrested, we had been arguing that the investigation should be impartial, speedy and supervised by the judiciary. We have now reached a stage where his life is at stake. To knowingly risk the life of a person in state custody by refusing proper medical treatment would amount to a form of the “encounter”, an extra-legal punishment which the State institutions are duty-bound to forego.

We appeal to the authorities to assure the nation that the Indian State respects the rule of law and the Constitution, by ensuring that P.Varavara Rao receives immediate and proper treatment and that his family is allowed to look after him during his illness.

[Appeal issued by the following five petitioners who had approached the Supreme Court on the matter of the Bhima Koregaon arrests ((Romila Thapar & Ors. Vs. Union of India & Ors., Writ Petition 32319 of 2018).]

Romila Thapar (romila.thapar@gmail.com)
Prabhat Patnaik (prabhatptnk@yahoo.co.in)
Devaki Jain (devakijain@gmail.com)
Maja Daruwala (maja.daruwala@gmail.com)
Satish Deshpande (sdeshpande7@gmail.com)

As Varavara Rao’s Health Worsens in Jail, Family Alleges Severe Negligence by Authorities

Rao, who has been in jail for close to two years, has been unwell since the lockdown and his family claim that he is suffering from memory loss.

Note: This article was originally published on July 11 and was republished on July 12 with details of a press note issued by Varavara Rao’s family.

Mumbai: The health of 78-year-old political activist, poet and writer Varavara Rao, who has been in jail for close to two years, has worsened. His family has alleged that the prison department has been blocking information on his condition from reaching them.

Rao began to deteriorate after he had a fall on May 28 inside the prison. He was in an unconscious state when he was moved to the state-run J.J. hospital for a few days before being moved back to the prison.

His daughter Pavana told The Wire that Rao has not been provided adequate care in the jail and has started losing coherence.

“We got a call from him today and he barely spoke for a minute. He was incoherent and sounded unstable. One of his co-accused who has been assigned duty to take care of him had to step in and inform us that he needs to be urgently moved to a hospital for better treatment,” Pavana said.

Also read: ‘Save His Life’: 40 Poets Write to PM Modi Asking For Varavara Rao’s Release

She mentioned that he has barely been able to move and has been speaking incoherently about incidents from his childhood.

Soon after his health first worsened in May, the family had moved court seeking urgent bail. The family claim that in order to oppose their bail application, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had moved him back to the prison, abruptly stopping his medication in the process.

Also read: Poet, Activist Varavara Rao Shifted to Hospital After He Faints in Mumbai Jail

“We have consulted specialists here and have found that his sodium and creatinine level was below normal and that there needed to have been a proper investigation into his health condition,” Pavana said. His family said Rao has age-related and other persistent health issues.

The family and Rao’s lawyers have also alleged that the prisons department has not been divulging information on his health. Information on Rao’s health condition first began to trickle in early this month when advocate Susan Abraham spoke to Vernon Gonsalves, her husband and an accused in the case. “Vernon told me that he has been moved in with Rao in the hospital to take care of him. Rao’s condition was deteriorating and that a co-accused has been kept with him in jail hospital,” she informed.

“When he fell sick in May, the police hastily moved him back. And since then, he has been at the jail hospital. However, the family got to know the seriousness of his health condition only today,” his daughter said.

Also read: Bombay High Court Orders a COVID-19 Patient to Return to Prison

Rao, who has been in the jail since his arrest in June 2018, for his alleged role in the Elgar Parishad- Koregaon Bhima case of Maharashtra, was, along with other accused, moved from Pune’s Yerwada prisons to Taloja central jail in the outskirts of Mumbai earlier this year. This was just a few days before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in India. Since then, the condition, especially in Mumbai, has been worrisome.

Close to 500 persons have been infected with coronavirus and four persons have already died across prisons. Rao’s bail application filed on health grounds is at present pending before the Bombay high court.

On Saturday, on receiving the phone call, his lawyer Nihalsing Rathod sent an email to the jail authorities asking for urgent access to his latest medical report. “Provide us the precise descriptions of his health condition,” Rathod wrote in the email. He has also sought for a video call to be arranged between Rao and his family members.

On Sunday, the family held a live press conference, demanding that the poet’s life is in danger. They later issued a press note which is signed by Rao’s wife, Hemalatha Rao, and his daughters Sahaja, Anala and Pavana.

The family raised concerns about Varavara Rao’s health. “As an eloquent and articulate public speaker and writer in Telugu for over five decades, a Telugu teacher for four decades and known for his meticulous memory, this fumbling, incoherence and loss of memory were in themselves strange and frightening,” the note reads.

“His life is the top most concern for us right now,” the letter says.

The complete press note, signed by Rao’s family, has been reproduced below.

Press Note – July 12, 2020

Don’t Kill Varavara Rao in Jail!

We, the family members of Varavara Rao, world-renowned Telugu revolutionary poet and public intellectual, who is incarcerated in Navi Mumbai’s Taloja Jail, are very much worried about his deteriorating health. His health condition has been scary for over six weeks now, ever since he was shifted in an unconscious state to JJ hospital from Taloja Jail on May 28, 2020. Even as he was discharged from the hospital and sent back to his jail three days later; there has been no improvement in his health and he is still in need of emergency healthcare.

The immediate cause of concern now is that we are very much perturbed at the routine phone call we received from him on Saturday evening. Though the earlier two calls on June 24 and July 2 were also worrying with his weak and muffled voice, incoherent speech and abruptly jumping into Hindi. As an eloquent and articulate public speaker and writer in Telugu for over five decades, a Telugu teacher for four decades and known for his meticulous memory, this fumbling, incoherence and loss of memory were in themselves strange and frightening.

But the latest call, on July 11 is much more worrisome as he did not answer straight questions on his health and went into a kind of delirious and hallucinated talk about the funeral of his father and mother, the events that happened seven decades and four decades ago respectively. Then his co-accused companion took the phone from him and informed us that he is not able to walk, go to toilet [sic] and brush his teeth on his own. We were also told that he is always hallucinating that we, family members, were waiting at the jail gate to receive him as he was getting released. His co-prisoner also said he needs immediate medical care for not only physical but also neurological issues. The confusion, loss of memory and incoherence are the results of electrolyte imbalance and fall of Sodium and Potassium levels leading to brain damage. The electrolyte imbalance may be fatal also. Taloja Jail Hospital is not at all equipped to handle this kind of serious ailment either in medical expertise or equipment. Thus it is highly required that he be shifted to a fully equipped super specialty [sic] hospital to save his life and prevent possible brain damage and risk to life due to electrolyte imbalance.

At the present juncture we are leaving aside the pertinent facts like, that the case against him is fabricated; he had to spend 22 months in jails as an undertrial with the process turned into punishment; his bail petitions got rejected at least five times now and even the bail petitions with his age, ill-health and Covid vulnerability as grounds were ignored. His life is the top most concern for us right now. Our present demand is to save his life. We demand the government to shift him to a better hospital or allow us to provide required medical care. We want to remind the government that it has no right to deny the right to life of any person, much less an undertrial prisoner.

P Hemalatha, wife

P Sahaja, P Anala, P Pavana, daughters

Pegasus: Targeted Activists, Lawyers Write Open Letter to Govt on Cyber Attack

“Such widespread surveillance produces a chilling effect on the entire society and goes against every grain of our democratic tradition of a free exchange of ideas and expressions,“ the letter reads.

New Delhi: The group of 19 journalists, human rights activists and writers who were targeted by a spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group have written a letter to the government, asking it to reveal all information it has about the cyber attack, other methods of mass surveillance, as well as the identity of the suspects.

WhatsApp had told the Indian government that 121 people were targeted by Pegasus in India through the vulnerability. The spyware, named Pegasus, was used to hack into any phone through a missed call via WhatsApp, giving the attackers full access to the device – including location data, emails, passwords and the ability to switch on the camera and microphone.

Also read: Israeli Spyware: India Turns to WhatsApp For Answers, But What Should We Really Be Asking?

“The knowledge that we have all been under surveillance by an unknown entity and that our intimate details, personal conversations, financial transactions etc. were being spied upon is deeply disturbing,” said the signatories to the letter. “This violates our fundamental right of privacy, and compromises not only our security, but also of those in our extended network of family, friends, colleagues, clients, sources etc.”

“Indeed, such widespread surveillance produces a chilling effect on the entire society and goes against every grain of our democratic tradition of a free exchange of ideas and expressions,“ they added.

The group demanded an answer from the government about whether it was aware of any contract between any state government or central ministry with the NSO group.

“If so, the details of such a contract, including its total value and the contracting agencies should be placed in the public domain, including information regarding the monitoring and oversight to which these operations have been subjected in order to prevent their abuse,” they wrote.

Also read: Indian Activists, Lawyers Were ‘Targeted’ Using Israeli Spyware Pegasus

“The fact that international private corporations, among other foreign players, have penetrated all levels of our telecommunication channels, and have the ability to access the most intimate details of so many Indian citizens, threatens our national sovereignty,” they wrote.

Above all, it is the job of a “responsible government” to ensure the security of all its citizens, the group added.

On October 30, the Centre had asked WhatsApp to explain the nature of the breach and the steps taken to protect Indian users by November 4. In response, the Facebook-owned messaging platform attached both a vulnerability note filed in May and a letter it sent to the government in September in which it reportedly alerted the Centre about the hacking.

Nihalsing Rathod, among the first people to talk publicly about his device being targeted by Pegasus malware, told MediaNama that the signatories “know 30-40 senior, dedicated lawyers in Delhi with whom we are associated in different capacities. All of us will decide together what needs to be done legally.”

The signatories include activists Degree Prasad Chouhan, Shalini Gera, Bela Bhatia and Seema Azad.

Indian Activists, Lawyers Were ‘Targeted’ Using Israeli Spyware Pegasus

Most of the potential victims, who were contacted by CitizenLab researchers and WhatsApp, are people who are connected with Bhima Khoregaon controversy and other Dalit issues.

Mumbai: Over the last two years, Nagpur-based human rights lawyer Nihalsing Rathod has received calls on WhatsApp from unknown numbers. These calls would be made from international numbers, and would invariably turn out to be a group call.

The moment Rathod answered them, the call would disconnect. He assumed these were innocuous calls made to his number but as a safety measure, reported each of the “suspicious calls” to WhatsApp.

On October 7, 2019, Rathod, however, was contacted by a senior researcher, John Scot-Railton, from the Toronto University’s ‘Citizen Lab’ informing him that he faced a “specific digital risk”.

“The senior researcher told me that his lab had followed my work and during their research had found out that my profile was under a surveillance attack. All those calls made to me for two years suddenly began to make sense,” Rathod told The Wire.

Also Read: Israeli Spyware Was Used to Spy on Indian Activists, Journalists, Says WhatsApp

The Citizen Lab was one of the first research organisations to examine how a piece of malicious software called ‘Pegasus’, operated. This spyware is produced by an Israeli surveillance firm called the NSO Group. In September 2018, The Citizen Lab published a comprehensive study identifying 45 countries, including India, in which operators of the spyware may be conducting operations.

The NSO Group has been in the spotlight this week after WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against them, alleging that they exploited a vulnerability in its video-calling feature to specifically target and snoop on over 1,400 users including activists and journalists.

In its response to the legal suit, the NSO Group however has claimed that its Pegasus spyware is mainly sold only to government agencies.

After speaking to Citizen Lab, Rathod wrote to WhatsApp once again with newer information and this time he says he received a response on the same platform.

“In May we stopped an attack where an advanced cyber actor exploited our video calling to install malware on user devices. There’s a possibility this phone number was impacted, and we want to make sure you know how to keep your phone secure,” the message from WhatsApp read, along with further steps to be taken to ensure security protections on his phone.

While WhatsApp’s message, which was sent on a verified business channel, didn’t specifically mention Pegasus or the NSO group, Rathod says the possibility of it is very high.

The Wire however has separately confirmed that this is indeed the message that was sent by WhatsApp to people it detected were targeted by Pegasus.

The message that Rathod received from WhatsApp. Credit: The Wire.

On Thursday, the Indian Express reported that the Facebook-owned platform said journalists and human rights activists in India have been targets of surveillance by operators using Pegasus.

WhatsApp recently made details of this clear in a broader disclosure before a US federal court in San Francisco.

Bhima Koregaon pattern?

Rathod is one of the lawyers handling the Bhima Koregaon case in which nine activists and lawyers have been arrested since June 2018. His senior legal mentor Surendra Gadling is among those arrested and was booked under several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code.

Rathod says that he is not the only one in his human rights activists circle who has complained of such calls. At least two other lawyers, both connected with the ongoing Bhima Koregaon trial and Gadling’s wife Minal Gadling have received similar calls.

One of them has confirmed having received a call and series of messages from CitizenLab informing her about a possible threat. She has, however, not received any email or message from WhatsApp.

Going by the testimonies of several activists and lawyers, a clear pattern of an attack on the anti-caste activists across India has emerged.

Rupali Jadhav, a 33-year-old cultural and anti-caste activist from Pune shared screenshots of messages that she had received from both WhatsApp and Citizen Lab two days ago. Jadhav however says she had not received any WhatsApp call from an “unknown number” or had seen any suspicious activity on the application.

Rupali Jadhav. Credit: Facebook

Jadhav, who has been associated with an anti-caste cultural group Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) for over a decade has been handling the social media handles of several social movements in the state. She says that may have been one of the primary reasons why her profile has got compromised.

“I am the official administrator of the WhatsApp and Facebook pages of Kabir Kala Manch, Bhima Koregaon Shaurya Din Prerana Abhiyan, Elgaar Parishad, and the political party Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. These spaces have been actively involved in confronting the state and have been asking uneasy questions. This is more to do with the organizations than me particularly,” Jadhav says.

Most persons associated with the KKM has had cases of UAPA registered against them and have been released on bail bond after having been incarcerated for several years.

Degree Prasad Chouhan, a Dalit rights activist and lawyer from Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district confirmed to The Wire that he too has received a call and chain of messages from both the Citizen Lab and WhatsApp informing him about the spyware attack.

Chouhan, a 37- year old, first-generation learner, and a school teacher- turned-activist belonging to a Dalit community has been at the forefront fighting caste atrocity and land-grab cases in Raigarh district. In his over 15 years of public life, Chouhan has focused his work on forceful displacement and indigenous communities’ land rights.

Chouhan, talking to The Wire said, although he was concerned that his phone was compromised, he was not surprised at all. “Since Una uprising, the Dalit rights movement in the country has been growing. Most of us have been involved in several anti-caste and land rights movement and we have been running both social and political movements on a large scale. The state is clearly feeling threatened,” Chouhan claimed. He also pointed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel and the nature of this attack. “As far as I know, no PM has made such a visit to Israel. These attacks have a much deeper link. It needs to be probed,” he alleged.

Bela Bhatia, Anand Teltumbde and Saroj Giri

Human rights lawyer Bela Bhatia also confirmed to The Wire that she had received the same message that Rathod got from Citizen Lab, with their researchers claiming that the Indian government was behind the surveillance.

“We fixed a time and I had a long chat with the researcher about Pegasus. He explained the spyware to me and said that WhatsApp had reached out to Citizen Lab a few months back and gave them a list of people who were affected. He said that most of those targeted were human rights activists and human rights lawyers. While explaining everything to me, he said it very clearly that their studies and analysis made it very clear that it was our own government that has done it,” she said.

“He mentioned this very clearly. As far as the nature of the spying is concerned, he said that it’s like carrying a spy in your pocket. Even in the room where you are sitting, they can know exactly what’s happening in the room through this. He said that it can access my camera and microphone without me knowing. He offered me some safeguards like changing my phone. He has been calling me from time to time and offering similar advice. He told me WhatsApp would contact me two weeks later. WhatsApp did contact me three weeks after that call with the same message everyone else got.”

Anand Teltumbde, academic and activist, told The Wire that he got a call from Citizen Lab around 8-10 days ago.

“[The researcher] explained to me what the spyware is all about. He sent me a text message first. Then I enquired about Citizen Lab’s credibility and spoke to its representative. The NSO group has said that it has given Pegasus licenses only to governments across the world. So, it is clear that the India’s government used the spyware against us, citizens.”

“[The researcher] said that from his research he found that my phone was hacked. Anybody in this country are now unsure. The government can do anything to you. Hacking phones of citizens is now a new normal.”

“My phone was being tapped even when I was in IIT. I was told by IIT authorities that my phone was being tapped. If you get to know this, what can you do. You just accept it. Now Citizen Lab told me that I am being targeted. What do I do to now. There is no method you can stop it.”

“This is not my problem alone. It is now everyone’s problem. Every Indian is under threat,” he said.

Other people reportedly affected include human rights lawyer Shalini Gera.

Ajmal Khan, a 29- year old Delhi- based research scholar is also one of the many persons who was approached by Citizen Lab and WhatsApp regarding his potentially compromised phone. Khan, who recently completed his PhD from Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences said that he had been receiving “strange calls” on WhatsApp sometime last year. “I did not pay attention to them. Also, when a person from Citizen Lab contacted me last week, I took it for a spam message and did not respond. Only when I came across the news today, I realized what had really happened to my WhatsApp application,” Khan told The Wire.

Khan also said that he received a message from the WhatsApp only today. “It was the same standard message sent out to others that an attack was averted on my phone sometime this year,” he added.

Khan is a well- known name among the students’ group in Mumbai and has been active in students’ struggles including the agitation following Ph.D. scholar Rohith Vemula’s death in 2016. Khan, a poet, who is originally from Kerala, has written three different collections of poems and is currently working in Delhi. He has been a part of several anti-caste and civil rights movements in Maharashtra.

Saroj Giri, who teaches political science at Delhi University, told The Wire that Citizen Lab reached out to him almost a month ago. “He told me that my phone is compromised by an advanced actor Pegasus, and that he wanted to give me a tip-off about it.”

Giri said that he didn’t take it too seriously as he was busy with other things. “But upon enquiry, I realised its full implications. I googled and looked up the NSO group. It hardly reveals any information about itself in its website. It does not mention its proper address or its shareholders.”

He said Citizen Lab told him that there is no way one can get rid of this spyware — no re-booting of the phone to factory settings or reinstalling Whatsapp would help. “Citizen Lab advised me to throw away my phone or switch it off and keep it a corner,” Giri said, adding that the cyber-security group told him that Pegasus can self-destruct itself.

“I asked Citizen Lab whether it could write me an official email requesting to have a conversation with me. They immediately did that, and I spoke with them after. John told me that I would soon receive a report from Whatsapp. It is unclear who exactly is responsible for this but it is clear that this is not just surveillance alone but a case of phone hack, the implications of which are dire. Both the Indian government and Whatsapp are answerable.”

Chhattisgarh based lawyer Shalini Gera, who has had experience of surveillance and police attack in the past said she too was informed by Citizen Lab and then, by WhatsApp, about the possible malware attack.

Gera could be one of the first persons to be approached by the Citizen Lab’s John Scot-Railton on October 4. Scot-Railton informed her about the specific time frame when her WhatsApp had been compromised — between February to May this year.

“And over subsequent conversations, John mentioned to me about Jamal Khashoggi’s case and the extent to which NSO Group was used,” Gera says.

Gera, who has been a part of the lawyers collective JagLag, has faced a severe backlash from several right-wing organisations and Chhattisgarh police for the work she and her colleagues had been doing in the state. She, however, was surprised when she first found out about the attack. “I was not sure why the government would go after someone like me who is barely active in the cases of Adivasi rights in Chhattisgarh. But the pattern slowly became clearer when I heard that several other activists and lawyers related to Bhima Koregaon case have been targeted too.”

Gera is representing Sudha Bharadwaj in the Bhima Koregaon case and says there are several colleagues and friends in rights activism who have been informed by WhatsApp about the possible malicious malware but have not been contacted by Citizen Lab yet.

According to the Indian Express report, at least two dozen academics, lawyers, Dalit activists and journalists in India were contacted and alerted by WhatsApp that their phones had been under state-of-the-art surveillance for a two-week period until May 2019.

The WhatsApp calls that Rathod used to get. Credit: The Wire.

An example of the mysterious WhatsApp calls that Rathod used to get. Credit: The Wire.

Rathod, however, says that he had been receiving these calls much before – and after – this two-week window period as mentioned by WhatsApp.

The Nagpur-based lawyer also adds that he looks at the attack on his profile as a serious attempt to victimise and possibly target more human rights lawyers. “My WhatsApp profile was not chosen randomly but by design. We are a handful of human rights lawyers who are confronting the current dispensation and are in the process of exposing the different strategies used to arrest human rights activists in the country.”

“I have reason to believe that the Bhima Koregaon case is based on the letters which were planted through this route or some other route by government agencies itself. The ridiculous contents of those letters make it more apparent,” he told The Wire.

Expressing concern over the development, Amnesty International India, in a statement, said, “This is a grave violation of the activists’ fundamental right to privacy enshrined in both national and international law.”

The human rights organisation has sought the NSO group’s license to be revoked. “On November 7, the Tel Aviv’s District Court is due to hear a legal case arguing that Israel’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) should revoke NSO Groups export license. The company’s Pegasus software has been used to target journalists and activists across the globe – including in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates. An Amnesty International staff member was also targeted using NSO malware,” the statement read.

Responding to the threat faced by activists and journalist globally, Danna Ingleton, deputy director of Amnesty Tech said, “NSO says its spyware is solely intended to ‘prevent crime and terrorism’, but instead the firm’s invasive surveillance tools are being used to commit human rights abuses. The safest way to stop NSO’s spyware products reaching governments who plan to misuse them is to revoke the company’s export license.”

Amnesty International has announced its legal support in the case in Tel Aviv District Court to force the Israeli Ministry of Defence to stop NSO’s spyware products.

(With inputs from Akhil Kumar)