 Friends, first of all, to say that the people who were arrested in August, which led these five petitioners, and it's been an honor and privilege to represent these petitioners, were represented by many, many councils. Prasanth is here with us. And there were many other lawyers who voluntarily came forward and stood in court and wanted to be part of the legal team that was representing. And I think that in itself indicates to us the significance that is attached to it and why these petitioners in the first place put their names forward and others came forward too. I will just give a little sense of where we are in the legal case today. As you know, this was the second round of arrest. It's a, you know, if it wasn't that there were real people who are being put into prison and it's part of the manner in which the present regime is going to suppress our rights, the rights of other citizens and the voices of those who wish to contest the kind of socio-political imagination that is being made available to us. It begins with an FIR and an event which dates back to 31st December 2017 and 1st January 2018, organized by two judges. It leads to many FIRs because there was a targeting and an attack on the Dalits who went to pay homage to the, on 1st January to a particular site where the Vijay's Thumb is. And on 8th January there is another FIR lodge which becomes a magical device through which rolling arrests are being made. And even as we speak here, it would not be surprising if this fate of arrests continues. We saw one set of arrests in June, early June 2018, again in end of August 2018 and since the event actually has nothing to do with what people are being arrested and charged and falsely implicated for, it is quite clear that this has become an occasion to rope in anybody who disagrees, who has ideas that disagrees, whose activism disagrees and who challenges various vested interests or represents people who are challenging various vested interests. The two judges, former judges who had organized on 31st December, there has been a recent media report, which tells us that our statement in the charge sheet was not given. This is a former Supreme Court judge speaking. Surely a former Supreme Court judge would know what is a police, what is it, what you give as a statement to the police, what is the value of it, should it be in a charge sheet. After two rounds of arrests, one set of charge sheet against the June arrestees who are also all activists has been filed. On 22nd November 2018, the Maharashtra police has asked for time of further 90 days to file a charge sheet against the August arrestees. Under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the law allows not only the first set of 90 days, if you don't file a charge sheet, the person in jail has a statutory right to bail, but you can ask for another 90 days because they are saying that we have to do a lot of research. So you have arrested the first people who were not running away, who work in this society and now you are saying that you need more time to gather evidence against them. The charge sheet that has been filed, there are two or three things which I would like to draw our attention to. They have increased the provisions. It's not only the Indian Penal Court and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, but within these two statutes, they have added many very, very open-ended, loose offenses which we know have repeatedly been used. The offense of sedition, the offense of waging war against the state, which are all political offenses and against which there has been a long-standing campaign by democratic rights groups that these are meant to be abused. So it's not as though there is a misuse taking place here. They are only meant for that purpose. The incident which has led to these two rounds of arrests, it has been repeatedly placed before the court that there is nothing to connect these people. What are we finding is now coming in the charge sheet. Apart from the letters that were initially made available, which have no, which are very vague, whose authenticity, veracity is yet to be tested or proved, we are now being told that there are other organizations who are being called frontal organizations. One important one that I want to underline here is the Indian Association of People's Lawyers. There are many, many lawyers who are, who are cause lawyers who do human rights lawyering across the country who are members of the Indian Association of People's Lawyers. The patron in a sense of which is Justice Hospit Suresh, a former judge of the Bombay High Court. In the Supreme Court, we had placed before the court, the Constitution, it's an organization which has a set of rules, which publishes an annual brochure, which has a perspective and where people say, yes, we represent, we are people's lawyers. It's interesting that almost every judge of the higher judiciary will at a public function, particularly to young lawyers or law students, encourage and enthuse them to become cause lawyers. Well, that is precisely what IAPL lawyers are, but then they become inconvenient and then their liberties are at stake. They are today being mentioned along with Kabir Kalamanj, which we know is a cultural organization, a cultural group. They are being named as frontal organizations of the banned CPI Maoist. In order to be a frontal organization under the UAPA, you have to be listed as a front organization by that particular state or central government. There is no such listing of either Kabir Kalamanj or IAPL, yet it passes off in a report of the public prosecutor to the court of law, which brings me to my main point, apart from what are the details of the cases. The legal system works on the assumption of good faith of the state and the agents of the state, whether it is the police or others. Do we not have an evidence of 70 years of democracy, which actually proves bad faith by agents of the state? Why is it that we continue to operate with a colonial jurisprudence where the citizen is suspect, but the state is presumed to act in good faith? What we are seeing repeatedly is the use and abuse of various authorities and agencies, whether it is through the police or the enforcement directorate or again unleashed against human rights organizations, that we see the use and abuse of these against those who are raising issues, ideas and challenging and contesting state power. The assumption that the court will make that what the police is saying is correct, is not written in the law, it is a burden on the police and the state to prove it and yet they are able to actually get away because legal scrutiny is diuted in the larger interests of the nation-state and that needs to be seriously challenged. We today do have the activists are in jail, their bail petitions in Pune were rejected, they will now have to at an appropriate time move the Bombay High Court. You would recall that when the case was going on in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court itself gave a fractured verdict. There was a dissenting judgment by Justice Chandrachur who not only upheld the that these people were and should be considered as human rights defenders and what was a prayer before the Supreme Court? A prayer was for a credible investigation. At no point have we said that you cannot investigate anybody. Every citizen of this country I hope should be subjected to investigation if there is reason to suspect. We only ask for a credible investigation which was the minority judgment was in our favor but two judges ruled against us. We filed a review petition. The review petition was heard in chambers. We did seek an open hearing which was denied and the review petition was dismissed. So now the case is before the trial court and I think we cannot allow it to only be seen through the lens of criminal law because the issues are much larger and also because we can already see through the documents that are being filed that they are hoping to rely exclusively on conjectures, on hyperbole, on fear and on facts which cannot be proven to keep the activists away and to have a chilling effect and perhaps law today has become an instrument in many cases of actually suppressing rights rather than an instrument or a mechanism of enhancing rights. The fact that the evidence will not yield anything as it has not in many cases of many activists is perhaps known to the state. The process therefore must constantly be challenged by all of us and I'm very grateful to the petitioners for keeping this conversation alive even as we continue to demand that this is what is being put out in the public domain remain narratives that are being spun and which have no legal basis and as was said by Professor Romula Thapard the urban knuckle is one whose ideas are dangerous it is nobody's case that there is any use of violence so I think it is a contestation of ideas and law is being used to not allow us to think and the provisions of sedition and UAPA are only reminiscent of the colonial jurisprudence which exactly as Professor Thapard said was what we challenged at the dawn of democracy. Thank you.