Yesterday #StanSwamy died, after eight months in prison conditions that exacerbated his Parkinson's. He was one of the jailed human-rights advocates aka #BhimaKoregaon 16.
The story of the evidence against them is... amazing and bizarre, and is worth going over. A thread.

2. After the first arrests in June of 2018, police began to leak sensational 'electronic evidence' – letters found on the activists' laptops, which showed their links to Maoist guerillas. The most shocking letter even proposed a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Modi.

3. The letters were strangely explicit: Conspirators used each others' real names, instead of aliases as Maoists typically do.
They openly detailed requirements for arms and planned attacks, without using code-words.

4. The correspondence also implicated “Congress friends” and leaders, and a range of civil-society groups and youth leaders, like Jignesh Mevani and Umar Khalid...

5. In short, the letters outlined an 'Urban Naxal' ecosystem, which neatly matched the right-wing's projection of the grand anti-national conspiracy: Armed guerillas, human rights activists, opposition parties, Dalit and Muslim student leaders – all in the bag.