“I went in there mentally prepared to die,” said Anand Teltumbde, sitting beside his collection of books in his apartment in Rajgriha — the former residence of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in Mumbai’s Hindu Colony.

An undertrial in the Bhima Koregaon case for over seven years, Teltumbde has been charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). He recently chronicled his two-year-long experience of imprisonment in Maharashtra’s Taloja Jail in his book The Cell and the Soul .

There’s a quiet intensity when Dr Anand Teltumbde speaks — the kind that comes from having lived through the stories one writes. “Those defending the republic’s founding principles are branded ‘anti-national’, and those eroding them are deemed its ‘guardians’,” he said.

From ‘urban Naxal’ to ‘ant

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