This story was close to my heart.
Having grown with naxalite-maoist ideals, I used to rever them.
During 1940-1990s
Moaists did an phenomenal job in fighting for oppressed, they were solely responsible for minimum wage enforcement, stopping the exploitation of tribals.
They fought off razakars with armed guerilla groups and saved innocent women from getting raped and mutilated.
Post 1990s,
The land reforms, abolition of feudal landlord system, employment creation actually solved most of the problems the poor were facing.
Migration of people to urban areas increased.
Thus, The maoists lost their purpose, and started searching for monsters to fight.
Post 1990,
maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests
doing contract killings in their free time.
They claim to fight for poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of their poverty.
In the last 10 years there were hunderds of incidents of maoists killing contractors laying roads to remote villages fearing the tribals will be out of their grip.
Hence I have zero sympathies for these 'activists' aka hired thugs.
This is a fairly standard derailment tactic in the Indian right wing ecosystem.
Begin the story be expressing deep familiarity with a situation they barely understand. Pretend to be neutral in the first half. Move on to attack a phantom target in the next half. These are variously Maoists, muslims, "rich" farmers, Sikhs, greta thunberg, forced religious conversions etc.
In this particular case pretend that the fabricated evidence linking social workers to Maoists is real and bury the lede in final sentence.
The planting of evidence story sounds unconvincing. There hasn't been any reason given who would have planted and for what reason. Some of the people assuming here it as a state sponsored stuff; but there is no such thing mentioned by the defendant. They are just trying to disprove the authenticity of electronic documents found on the computer of the accused.
The FIR was lodged by state police on January 8 2018 on behalf of local people complaining about the so called activist because of the violence that took place after provocative speech on 31dec. The case is then taken up by federal agency (NIA) because of the accused people's linkage found with a band militant organization. NIA states that there are sufficient oral evidence in addition to the electronic evidence which this report is trying to disprove (which itself is subject to verification in the court)
> The planting of evidence story sounds unconvincing. There hasn't been any reason given who would have planted and for what reason.
What? You honestly believe that trying to incriminate activists by planting fake evidence of assassination plots and associations with maoist groups is unconvincing and not a valid reason?
I mean, not so long ago India persecuted an activist who helped Greta Thunberg to the extent of arresting and accusing her of sedition just because the girl helped edit an online document that Greta Thunberg promoted.
> They are just trying to disprove the authenticity of electronic documents found on the computer of the accused.
There was no "trying". They found evidence that emails with malware were targeted at the accused activists, and they found evidence that said malware was used to plant evidence. Also, the "smoking gun" files were sloppily planted. I mean, the article states that incriminating docs were dropped on the windows folder without even having metadata showing they were ever accessed or opened in the computer.
> I mean, not so long ago India persecuted an activist who helped Greta Thunberg to the extent of arresting and accusing her of sedition just because the
girl helped edit an online document that Greta Thunberg promoted.
It wasn't just another document; it was linked with the planning and execution of violence that happened on 26 January Republic day in the capital (New Delhi) wherein the national symbols like Red Fort were invaded and damaged. Obviously police acted on the toolkit document and if not enough evidence were found, she'll be out of the trouble. btw, while working on the document her WhatsApp messages with Gretta also showed that she knew that she could get into trouble.
>> Disha (9:35 pm): Ok can you not tweet the toolkit at all..can we just not say anything at all for a while? I am gonna talk to lawyers. I am sorry but our names are on it and we can literally get UAPA against us.
> There was no "trying". They found evidence that emails with malware were targeted at the accused activists, and they found evidence that said malware was used to plant evidence.
Whatever they've found needs to be proven in court before it can be considered as evidence. Until then, as per the rule of law, it's just an opinion of the defendant.
> It wasn't just another document; it was linked with the planning and execution of violence (...)
No, not really. That's a very convenient story but an outright fabrication. Greta Thunber's document clearly did not laid out any plot. Greta's doc provide suggestions on how to protest the upcoming agriculture reform law, and the persecuted activist was jailed for editing two lines.
Moreover, the activist was arrested and accused of "wage economic, social, cultural and regional war against India", which quite clearly screams of the doingd of a fascist regime dedicated to oppress their citizens if they propose any form of criticism of the ruling regime.
> btw, while working on the document her WhatsApp messages with Gretta also showed that she knew that she could get into trouble.
The lack of self-awareness and desperation in your comment is very telling. I mean, of course she was concerned she could be persecuted: India's ruling regime is so oppressive that goes to the extent of charging people who edit two lines of a doc with sedition and waging war on India.
> No, not really. That's a very convenient story but an outright fabrication. Greta Thunber's document clearly did not laid out any plot. Greta's doc provide
suggestions on how to protest the upcoming agriculture reform law, and the persecuted activist was jailed for editing two lines.
It's a fact that the document had a plan for 26 January and it's also a fact that violence at a large scale took place that day in the capital. It's a sufficient ground for the police to pursue the people involved to investigate the links between both.
> The lack of self-awareness and desperation in your comment is very telling.
Injecting ad hominem in your arguments weakens your position. It demonstrates that the self-awareness has taken over by insecure ego, a sign of the conditioned mind.
> screams of the
doingd of a fascist regime dedicated to oppress their citizens if they propose any form of criticism of the ruling regime.
This comments certainly seem to come from a parallel reality because in the reality that I live, I come across media entities, people, leaders and even students, openly criticizing the so called current fascist regime, almost on a daily basis, even some times going to the length of threatening to harm the PM physically or break the nation.
I haven't come across even a single incident where people just got into jail for criticizing the current government.
Obviously when some violence happens and you're suspected to have some links, police will arrest you with charges it seems fit, but the law will take its own course and proceedings in the court shall decide eventually.
IN the fascist regime, judiciary won't have the freedom to let go the people the regime doesn't like; even in communist countries (good example is China), there's no independence of judiciary.
On the other hand, Indian judiciary takes pride in asserting its superiority wherever it can (just stating as a fact to demonstrate the independence of judiciary). I have only seen increased judicial activism during the current regime and certainly not decreasing of it.
> maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests doing contract killings in their free time. They claim to fight for poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of their poverty.
This is a familiar dynamic, seen also with the Shining Path violence in Peru. A very well-regarded book, "The Other Path" was written by a Peruvian economist to refute the common radical narratives and lay down a pathway for development that actually provides wider benefits for the population.
This reads like an apologia for state fabricating evidence to jail social workers.
Labeling social workers or human rights activists Maoists, naxals, antinationals, planting evidence and jailing them without trial for years is the regime's modus operandi.
I take it that you are fine with social workers being imprisoned via fabricated evidence.
It looks like this account has been using HN primarily (actually exclusively) for political and ideological arguments. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of what they're arguing for or against) because it destroys what this site is for, and is explicitly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I've therefore banned this account. Doing this on HN will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't do that.
> What has any of that got to do with the Indian government planting evidence on 'activists'?
This.
I mean, the article states that the Indian government was found planting evidence regarding assassination plots and forging associations with a maoist group, and suddenly the discussion revolves about maoist groups around the globe?
What next? Should we commend the Indian government for it's keen eye to pick fake stories to frame activists with?
Well, the entire article presumes the security audit does not have conflict of interest and Everyone here presumes its state planted and activists are falsely imprisioned.
This article is nothing but a hit piece trying to capitilize on the death news of one of the 'activist' and trying to create a sympathy wave.
I am not presuming anything. I am just giving backstory on what goes on on the ground.
Anyone who claims to fight for tribals rights are either maoists or chritian missionaries.
One of the so called activist (who died last week) was a Jesuit priest.
Yeah, Maoism caused circa 74 millions of deaths at home. Its very hard to believe they are treasuring human rights in any form. We should give India a break and let them fight terrorist incursion before people get hurt.
During 1940-1990s Moaists did an phenomenal job in fighting for oppressed, they were solely responsible for minimum wage enforcement, stopping the exploitation of tribals.
They fought off razakars with armed guerilla groups and saved innocent women from getting raped and mutilated.
Post 1990s, The land reforms, abolition of feudal landlord system, employment creation actually solved most of the problems the poor were facing. Migration of people to urban areas increased. Thus, The maoists lost their purpose, and started searching for monsters to fight.
Post 1990, maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests doing contract killings in their free time. They claim to fight for poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of their poverty. In the last 10 years there were hunderds of incidents of maoists killing contractors laying roads to remote villages fearing the tribals will be out of their grip.
Hence I have zero sympathies for these 'activists' aka hired thugs.