Conjuring The BK16 Myth: The Fiction Of The Elgar Case

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Conjuring the BK16 Myth: How the Elgar Parishad case rests on fiction and deception

This is the second report in a three-part investigative series on the Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon case. Read part one here and part three here.

By Prashant Rahi and Mouli Sharma

March 21, 2025

Three months after a Hindutva mob attacked a peaceful gathering of Dalit-Bahujan men, women, and children, a cabal from the Pune Urban Police mounted a bizarre prosecution, holding 16 eminent human rights defenders (HRDs) responsible for the Elgar Parishad, an anti-caste event held in the city, a day before. The infamous case has, however, come to draw its name less from the event, and more from the calamitous gathering that assembled on both sides of the river Bhima, on 1st January 2018, to pay homage to an obelisk-shaped martyrs’ column, at Perne Phata, opposite the village of Koregaon. In the months that followed, the HRDs were imprisoned in waves of arrests across the country, with no evidence so far linking them to the mob violence. Every year, on the 1st of January, as reported in the first part of this series, Dalit-Bahujans from all over Maharashtra, and beyond, gather around…

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Prashant Rahi

Prashant Rahi is an electrical and systems engineer, who completed his education from IIT, BHU, before eventually becoming a journalist for about a decade in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. He was the Chairperson for Human Rights and Democracy at the annual Indian Social Science Congresses held between 2011 and 2013, contributing to the theorisation of social activists’ and researchers’ experiences. Rahi devoted the greater part of his time and energy for revolutionary democratic changes as a grassroots activist with various collectives. For seven years, he worked as a Correspondent for The Statesman, chronicling the Uttarakhand statehood movement, while also participating in it. He has also contributed political articles for Hindi periodicals including Blitz, Itihasbodh, Samkaleen Teesri Duniya, Samayantar and Samkaleem Hastakshep. From his first arrest in 2007 December in a fake case, where he was charged as the key organiser of an imagined Maoist training camp in a forest area of Uttarakhand, to his release in March 2024 in the well-known GN Saibaba case, Rahi has been hounded as a prominent Maoist by the state for all of 17 years. In 2024, he joined The Polis Project as a roving reporter, focusing on social movements.

Mouli Sharma

Mouli Sharma is a scholar of religion at Jamia Millia Islamia and a freelance journalist from New Delhi. Her work has appeared in Nivarana, Think Global Health, Feminism in India, The Leaflet, and NewsClick. She is a published photojournalist & illustrator and has been featured in The Hindu College Gazette and the quarterly Pink Disco. She is the editor-in-chief of the student-run news site, The Voice Express, and is a literary editor for the digital lit-mag, The Queer Gaze.