“It’s tough without him around. I am not hopeful of any positive outcome now,” says Meenal Gadling, wife of human rights lawyer Surendra Gadling, who has been languishing in Pune’s Yerawada jail for more than a year now. When Surendra was arrested from his house in the wee hours of June 6, 2018, Meenal never imagined it was going to be a long haul for her husband. The police allege he was among those involved in organising the Elgaar Parishad meeting, and claim that speeches at the meeting led to violence in Maharashtra’s Bhima-Koregaon on January 1, 2018, in which one person was killed and several injured.
“They took away some CDs from our house. It was mostly children’s study material, projects and music CDs. And now they claim what they had recovered was Maoist material,” says Meenal.
Simultaneous raids were conducted on the same day across the country, and four others—poet-publisher Sudhir Dhawale, academic and women’s rights activist Shoma Sen, and democratic rights activists Mahesh Raut...
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