Mumbai: Civil rights activist and author Anand Teltumbde never thought he would ever be writing a prison memoir. He also never thought he would ever see the inside of a prison.
On Thursday, as Teltumbde spoke about his book, ‘The Cell and the Soul’, in his book launch at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, he thanked the government for the opportunity, for the “unexpected reward”.
“I was born an anti-establishment man. The world, fraught with injustice, has been unacceptable to me since I gained my consciousness,” said Teltumbde, who spent 31 months in Taloja jail in connection with the Maharashtra Police’s probe into the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence.
As Teltumbde grew up, his professional life as an academic and a scholar quickly overshadowed his activism.
“I thought I would never qualify for an arrest. Least did I imagine that Babasaheb Ambedkar’s republic would turn into a republic of mendacity, where inversion of meanings would reign supreme, and all citizens would become potential anti-nationals and terrorists. I must thank the dispensation for granting me the unexpected reward I thought I never deserved,” Teltumbde said.
Teltumbde was arrested in 2020 under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for allegedly having Maoist links and promoting enmity between different caste groups. Following the FIR against him, Teltumbde had categorically rejected all the allegations about his association with the CPI (Maoist) and had even written an open letter to the public in 2019 requesting their support.
Life inside a prison
Published by Bloomsbury, Teltumbde’s memoir not only talks about the conditions in Indian prisons, but also explains the shortcomings of the criminal justice system, beginning with the most fundamental lack of basic medical facilities, even for those who are physically weak; an unreasonable length of time—often years—between an arrest and trial; obstacles to meetings for family members; a failure to hold police officers accountable for wrongful arrests; and corruption.
Teltumbde was first arrested on 2 February 2019 at the domestic terminal of the Mumbai airport. However, a Pune court called the arrest “illegal” as the Supreme Court had given Teltumbde interim protection from arrest till 11 February, though it had refused to quash the FIR against him. Teltumbde was hence released.
The second prolonged arrest under UAPA was in February 2020, which led to the 31-month imprisonment in Taloja Jail. The Bombay High Court granted him bail in November 2022, finding insufficient evidence of Teltumbde’s involvement; the Supreme Court upheld this decision, and he was released on November 26, 2022.
The activist talks about his struggles inside the prison and about his family outside the prison. In one of the incidents, the superintendent confiscated mosquito nets used by undertrials in the mosquito-infested Taloja prison. He had to write a plea to the court for such a basic amenity. In another account, he talks about the lack of medical care for COVID-19 patients. After contracting COVID inside the prison, the only treatment he received was from fellow prisoners who worked at the prison hospital. He also talks about being denied “mulakat” meeting with his wife on unjust grounds.
Teltumbde’s book also makes several observations about fellow inmates from the time he spent at Taloja Jail. In his book, he talks about an inmate called Bhola — the only bread-winner of his family — who was arrested without ‘knowing his actual charge’. He would often clutch at the bars at night, and other inmates would call him ‘mental’.
Eventually, he died by suicide. Teltumbde reflects on how a system that is meant to protect the innocents very often fails those it is meant to serve.
Another inmate, 84-year-old Stan Swamy, died in police custody awaiting trial. He was also arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case and suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Unable to bathe and feed himself, Stan was denied bail multiple times. He was even denied a basic sipper and straw to help him with this condition. Due to his deteriorating condition, the Bombay High Court eventually directed to move him to a private hospital in Mumbai for treatment, where he died in July 2021.
Speaking at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, Teltumbde dedicated the book to his brother Milind Teltumbde, a coal miner turned a CPI (Maoist) operative, who was killed in a 2021 encounter.
Senior advocate Dr Gayatri Singh, a guest speaker on the panel that discussed Teltumbde’s book on Thursday, said, “And yet the book left me with a glimmer of hope, as I see Anand rising from the ashes.”
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‘Various problems in India’s justice system’
In his book, Teltumbde has also attempted to highlight the various problems with India’s criminal justice system. For instance, he talks about how one sees alleged gangsters being given much better treatment in prison, while undertrials struggle for basic amenities. Today, 74 per cent of India’s 4 lakh prisoners are undertrial and face this plight. Many will spend years without trial, and many will be acquitted after years due to a lack of sufficient evidence. Meanwhile, they suffer a loss of their reputation, livelihoods, and often loved ones.
Teltumbade’s book presents an unpleasant but accurate picture of years lost to prison. He talks about inmates who have been led to their death by the system due to improper medical care or by their own hands through suicide.
He also raises the broader question of the prisons serve the purpose of their existence as a correctional facility or are they instruments of control?
Senior advocate Mihir Desai, who was part of the panel to discuss Teltumbde’s book at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, said, “Public Interest Litigation in India started in the 1970s, and most of them dealt with prison reforms. In the last 40 years, there have been more judgments in the courts on prison reforms than on any other system. But despite judgment after judgment after judgment, there are no reforms in the system.”
The panel also featured Ehtesham Siddiqui and Abdul Wahid Shaikh, who were arrested for their alleged involvement in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts and acquitted by the Bombay High Court in July this year.
Ehtesham Siddiqui, who had spent 19 years in prison before his acquittal in July 2025, said, “All prison literature shows that prison is a place where a small criminal goes out as a big criminal. Small murderer goes out as big murderer.”
Cauvery Bhalla is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint
(Edited by Saptak Datta)