The United Nations Human Rights Office has urged the Indian government to release the activists arrested in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, ...
The United Nations Human Rights Office has urged the Indian government to release the activists arrested in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, “at the very least on bail”, The Wire reported on Saturday.
“We continue to be concerned about the situation of activists detained in India, including in the context of the Bhima Koregaon events,” the UN Human Rights office said on January 22 in reply to a question at the weekly press briefing. “We encourage the authorities to release these individuals, at the very least on bail while they await trial – in accordance with the High Commissioner’s call to decongest prisons during the pandemic.”
The UN body also noted that some of these detainees were “elderly and in poor health”. Varvara Rao, an 80-year-old poet and activist, and 83-year old tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, are among many jailed in the case.
It reiterated Michelle Bachelet’s, the UN human rights body’s high commissioner, earlier call to the Centre to ensure that no one was “detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly – and to do its utmost, in law and policy, to protect India’s robust civil society”.
Bachelet had in October expressed concern over the use of “vaguely defined laws” such as the...
