Latest news with #Babu
The Wire
18 hours ago
- Politics
- The Wire
Why Hany Babu Writes From Prison
July 28, 2025 marks the fifth year of Babu's arrest. In the past five years, he has written several times to his wife, daughter and other family members. Hany Babu. In the background are excerpts from his letters. Photos: By arrangement. The best way to harm an academic is to simply lock them out of their computer and deny them access to their years of research. This is exactly what had happened to Hany Babu M.T, a professor at the Delhi University, when the Pune police had first raided his house on September 10, 2019. Ten months later, on July 28, 2020, Babu was arrested, as one of the 16 persons implicated in the Elgar Parishad case. July 28, 2025 marks the fifth year of Babu's arrest. In the past five years, he must have exchanged hundreds of letters with his wife, daughter and other family members. Babu's wife Jenny Rowena, also a professor at DU, and daughter Farzana are both Delhi-based, and letters have been their primary mode of staying in touch, alongside bimonthly court visits and phone calls. Babu, who is lodged in Taloja Central jail, and is awaiting release on bail, reflects on some concerns in the letters he has exchanged with his family. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court allowed Babu to approach either the trial or the high court for bail. 'My academic writings and research were almost wiped clean when the Pune police came and took away my electronic devices,' he narrates in one such letter written to his family. The police took the passwords of all his emails, cloud (virtual storage) accounts, and shut him out from all his accounts, making all the data and research works inaccessible to him. 'I remember how difficult it was even to teach without access to all the notes and materials I had prepared,' Babu recalls the pre- arrest days in one of his letters to his family. The time between the raid and the arrest, he writes, were only spent in the apprehension of incarceration and it took him a long long time before he could get back to academic activities. At Taloja, like most of his co-defendants in the Elgar Parishad case, Babu too has immersed himself in reading and writing. One of his articles on pre-trial detention, co-authored along with his co-defendant Surendra Gadling, was recently cited in one of the Bombay high court's orders. 'Quarantine' Babu's arrest was in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. By then, the case had already been transferred to the National Investigations Agency (NIA). As soon as he was sent to jail, he was shunned in a solitary cell as a way to 'quarantine' a new prisoner before moving into a regular barrack. For the first few days, he wrote that he had no access to books, pen and papers. And days later, when pen and paper were made available to him, he said his happiness knew no bounds. 'Writing, in a place like prison, is the only outlet you have at times,' he shares in one of his letters. For the first few days, his writings were all about his new experiences as an incarcerated person, the memories and, 'of course the letters', he says. During the pandemic, courts were the first ones to shut down and move to virtual mode. This also meant that the incarcerated persons were no longer being ferried to courts for regular hearings. Outside of the laborious jail visits, families would only meet their loved ones in court. The environment there would also be relatively relaxed. But the outbreak of the coronavirus changed this in 2020. 'In those days, letters sent weekly were the only way of communication. And the replies to those letters would reach only after a month,' he writes. 'When you interact with an average prisoner...' Although a teaching faculty in the English department of the Delhi University, Babu's interest in social justice has been evident through his writings. He spent a large part of his academic years studying the many ways in which the academic spaces kept Bahujan students away. In one of his letters, Babu recalls how he always had interest in law and human rights. And when he began his work for the defence committee set up for the release of his colleague G.N. Saibaba, his knowledge moved from the realm of books to the real. Babu was a part of the core team that was formed after Saibaba, a 90% disabled and wheelchair-bound academic, was arrested in 2014 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). In March 2024, Saibaba was finally released from jail but within months, he died of the many complications he had developed due to prolonged incarceration. Reflecting on his journey, first as a rights activist and now as an incarcerated person himself, Babu says that as a part of the defence committee, all his knowledge was 'bookish'. 'Of course, that knowledge helped, but prison experiences have given me lessons for a lifetime. Reading about looking at prisoners without being prejudiced by the crime that they are said to have committed is one thing, but when you interact with an average prisoner you understand how important it is to be able to look at people without being affected by their alleged crime,' he says in one of his letters. Also read: How Long Is Too Long for an Undertrial Prisoner To Be Detained? Prions, he says, have taught him to look at issues of law more from the perspective of those who are caught in its crosshairs. 'I have witnessed so many people getting acquitted after a long period of incarceration, sometimes after close to a decade or sometimes even more,' he writes. 'Hapless prisoners spending months or even years in prison even after being granted bail as they are unable to meet the bail conditions.' Equality before law and political prisoners He draws attention to the differential treatment meted to those belonging to the privileged class. Without naming, he refers to the 2020 case of TV anchor and editor Arnab Goswami's and how the prison staff had worked 'overtime' to ensure he was released the very same day as the Supreme Court's order. 'Sadly, such laws don't apply to everyone,' he writes in his letter. In one of his writings, he delves deeper into his understanding of the term political prisoners, which has come to be associated, especially in the mainstream discourse, with those arrested for their left leaning politics. 'Sometimes, I feel all prisoners are political prisoners at some level. If you think of it, it is the society that labels certain acts as 'crime',' he writes. He adds that, 'many of the so-called crimes are, in a sense, statements against the inequalities, oppression and discrimination in the society.' He talks of how often it is the 'powerless' who end up being on the 'wrong side of the law'. 'When you heard the stories of the police or even some lawyers behaving towards the prisoners, you would feel they are the bigger criminals, but they just happen to be on the side of the power,' in one of his letters, Babu writes. He refers to American Marxist and feminist political activist Angela Davis's powerful correlation between black slavery and incarceration. 'According to Angela Davis', he writes, 'as long as slavery was in place, prisons in America hardly had black persons. I think the same would have been true of the Dalits in India, if untouchability were still practiced.' He further writes that as long as our society practices discrimination and marginalisation on the basis of caste and religion, 'we will have our prisons filled with Dalits, Adivasis, Backward Classes and Muslims'. Prisons Prisons, he writes in one of his communications to the family, 'doesn't treat the inmates as humans or individuals, let alone as being capable of reading or writing'. Even a simple act of accessing the prison library, he writes, is viewed as a 'security threat' and therefore, unnecessary. Accessing reading material has been a struggle, he shares. 'But thanks to the collective effort of my co-defendants over the years, the prison administration has become more accommodative when it comes to books and reading materials, especially towards us,' he says. But for an average prisoner, the struggle still continues, according to him. Over the years, the government has started calling prisons a 'correctional facility'. 'But hardly anything is being done to achieve those aims,' he writes. The several educational courses run inside prison are 'farcical', he writes, citing examples of the digital photography course that he enrolled himself for. 'The instructor kept assuring us that we will be given the certificate and needn't worry about anything else.' Teaching English to other incarcerated persons, Babu writes, has been 'more of a learning experience for me about my inadequacy as an adult educator'. As an academic and a rights activist, Babu continues to write while in jail, but he also says that it comes from a place of complete awareness that 'one will be allowed to voice one's views only insofar as it is not too critical of the state.' 'But then, I don't know how much of that is not true of the 'free' world outside prison,' he thinks aloud. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Hindu
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
State offers immense growth opportunities, says Minister Sridhar Babu
From emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, life sciences, renewable energy, logistics, food processing, aerospace, defence manufacturing to electric mobility, Telangana offers investment opportunities across sectors and industries, IT and Industries Minister D. Sridhar Babu said here on Thursday. The Minister, who was speaking at Investopia Global, said this inviting industrialists from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to invest in the State. Telangana may be geographically small, but it is a State with grand ambition and lays emphasis on strong implementation. In a short span, it has risen like a phoenix and emerged as a model in development and welfare for other States, Mr. Babu said. In 2024–25, Telangana recorded a GSDP growth of 8.2%, which was higher than the national average of 7.6%. Telangana's contribution to the national GDP has exceeded 5%, the Minister's office said in a release on his address. He sought to highlight the growth potential in the backdrop of the State pursuing the goal of becoming a $3 trillion economy by 2047. In the last 18 months, the State attracted fresh investments worth ₹3.2 lakh crore. Investopia Global was jointly organised by the UAE and Telangana government. Setting up of dry ports, multimodal logistics parks, industrial corridors, net-zero industrial parks, EV zones, green logistics hubs, Regional Ring Road (RRR) and Metro Phase–2 are some of the projects that are expected to further boost industrial development in the State. The government is also set to develop Future City that will become a world hub for fintech, climate tech and smart mobility innovation. Mr. Sridhar Babu also cited the growth in data centres, global capability centres (GCCs), AI labs and aerospace clusters in the State. Investopia Global organisers said the programme seeks to advance UAE-India partnerships in sectors such as agri-tech, AI, defence and tourism in the backdrop of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement UAE and India signed in 2021. Thursday's programme served as a platform for exploring strategic opportunities in research and development, manufacturing, and clinical innovation. The sessions touched on opportunities for cooperation in supporting entrepreneurship ecosystem and startups by relying on venture capital funding and the support provided by accelerators and incubators such as Hub71 and T-Hub.
New Indian Express
6 days ago
- Automotive
- New Indian Express
KGF Babu coughs up Rs 40 lakh road tax for two Rolls-Royces
BENGALURU: Transport officials have collected nearly Rs 40 lakh in pending road tax from businessman and politician Yusuf Sharif aka KGF Babu, for plying two Maharashtra-registered luxury cars in Karnataka. Babu owns a Rolls-Royce Phantom and Rolls-Royce Ghost that he, officials said, bought from actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan. A team led by Joint Commissioner of Transport Shobha went to Babu's house in Vasanth Nagar on Wednesday, and told him that he has to shell out nearly Rs 40 lakh, including penalty for late payment, for the two cars. 'For any vehicle registered outside Karnataka, the owner must pay road tax here if they are found operating the vehicle for more than a year. Babu has been using the vehicles for nearly two years. RTO officials collected enough evidence against Babu,' Shobha said. Officials said Babu initially claimed that he was not using the vehicles in Karnataka permanently, and they would be sent back to Maharashtra, but later paid the tax. 'One car had Rs 19.73 lakh in pending tax, while the other had Rs 18.53 lakh. He paid the tax and penalty for late payment for both vehicles at once,' Shobha said.
Hans India
6 days ago
- Automotive
- Hans India
KGF Babu in trouble over celebrity cars purchased from Amitabh, Aamir
Bengaluru: Once a man who faced great hardships, KGF Babu is now a wealthy businessman with assets worth hundreds of crores. Known for his fascination with luxury cars, especially those previously owned by Bollywood celebrities, Babu has now run into legal trouble due to unpaid road taxes. According to reports, officials from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) conducted a surprise inspection at Rukhsana Palace, Babu's residence in Vasanthnagar, Bengaluru. The action was taken after it was found that he had not paid road taxes for several of his high-end vehicles. KGF Babu is said to own two Rolls-Royce cars, one of which was previously used by Amitabh Bachchan (MH 11 AX 1) and another by Aamir Khan (MH 02 BB 2), which the actor had used for just a year. These vehicles, registered in Maharashtra, had their lifetime tax paid in that state. However, Karnataka authorities are now demanding local tax payments for operating the vehicles within their jurisdiction. The RTO team, led by Joint Commissioner Shobha, had to face resistance when Babu reportedly refused to open the gate to his residence, causing the officials to wait outside for a considerable time. Responding to the incident, Babu stated, 'I'm ready to pay the tax. Both my vehicles are registered in Maharashtra, and lifetime tax has already been paid there. If the RTO wants me to pay Karnataka taxes too, I will. I'm a responsible citizen and won't evade taxes. If allowed, I will pay it immediately.' Later he made the payment to the RTO through a DD. In a further twist, RTO officials discovered that the luxury vehicles were displaying MLC (Member of Legislative Council) passes, reportedly issued in the name of MLC Nazeer Ahmed. These passes were seen on a Rolls-Royce and a Ford vehicle belonging to Babu. Once the media noticed the passes, they were hastily removed. This incident has raised serious questions about tax compliance and misuse of government-issued privileges, prompting further scrutiny from enforcement agencies.
Hans India
21-07-2025
- Hans India
One held for committing financial frauds
Tirupati: The Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF) of Tirupati jointly arrested a fraudster on Sunday who had been cunningly deceiving train passengers by exploiting their trust and misusing their mobile phones for financial fraud. The accused, identified as Venu Babu from Ongole, was apprehended following a coordinated operation by the GRP and RPF teams. He had been targeting unsuspecting passengers by purchasing regular train tickets and blending in with fellow travellers. Through friendly and casual conversations during the journey, he would earn the trust of co-passengers before requesting their mobile phones under the pretext of needing to contact his relatives or friends. Once in possession of the victim's phone, Babu would covertly access mobile payment applications like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm to transfer funds to bank accounts of his choice. The victims remained unaware of the fraudulent transactions until much later. During interrogation, Venu Babu confessed to a similar crime committed in October 2024 at Tirupati Railway Station, where he duped a passenger and fraudulently transferred Rs 87,000. Following diligent investigation, the authorities managed to recover the entire defrauded amount from the accused. Legal proceedings against him are currently underway. The GRP and RPF have urged passengers to remain cautious during train journeys. They specifically advised travellers not to hand over their mobile phones to strangers and to refrain from accepting food items or any goods from unknown individuals. Commending the swift action of the security forces, the Railway Department lauded the efforts of Dharmendra and Ramakrishna Reddy of the RPF, along with their teams, under the leadership of RPF Inspector Sandeep Kumar and GRP Inspector Aasirvadam.
