Detained human rights defenders Sudha Bhardwaj and Shoma Sen expressed their solidarity with Women’s March India when making an appearance in court. They said that they would march inside their jail cells on April 4.
Detained human rights defenders Sudha Bhardwaj and Shoma Sen expressed their solidarity with Women’s March on April 4 when making an appearance in court. They were happy to hear about the Women’s March, including the fact that their names and photos were part of the campaign material. They have sent their solidarity to the March, and they said that they would march inside their jail cells on April 4.
“Considering that they have no fans in their cells (the summer heat is getting worse day by day in Pune), that there’s a water shortage in the jail, and that they’ve been kept in solitary confinement, their spirits are very high. All smiles, and dignified bearing!” a message read.
Women activists and concerned citizens from India have announced a Women’s March to be held on April 4, 2019, to reject the current environment of hate and violence and to claim their constitutional rights as citizens of a democratic republic.
Sudha Bharadwaj was imprisoned in her own home from August 28 to October 27. In August last year, Bharadwaj was arrested by the Pune police, which was investigating a public meeting – called the ‘Elgar Parishad’ – held prior to the caste-based violence that broke out in Bhima Koregoan, near Pune, on December 31, 2017.
Bharadwaj has spent nearly three decades working with underprivileged communities in Chhattisgarh. She was part of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, a labour organisation. She has been a trade unionist, human rights activist and lawyer, engaging with marginalised workers and Adivasis dispossessed of their land.
Shoma Sen is an assistant professor and head of the English literature department of the Nagpur University and a women’s rights activist. Sen and advocate Gadling, who are presently lodged in Yerwada prison, were arrested along with Dalit activist-publisher Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut and Rona Wilson in the first countrywide crackdown by the city police probing the ‘Elgaar Parishad’ and the subsequent Bhima-Koregaon violence.
