The Lucknow Conspiracy Case and the Mis-Rule of Law
InSAF India team | 31 August 2026 | InSAF
This article has been written in a period of escalating intensification of state repression in India, in particular the repression of ground-level activists focusing on the land rights and human rights of marginalised Indigenous (Adivasi and other tribal communities) and caste-oppressed peoples, and religious minorities. After claiming success in ‘annihilation’ of the longstanding people’s struggle and insurgency in the Adivasi (Indigenous Peoples) areas in March 2026, the government of India has expanded its call to end ‘Naxalism’ (Maoism) in central India, to include anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-displacement and labour activists across the country as so-called ‘Urban Naxals’ or, more recently, ‘Dimagi Naxals’ [‘intellectual Naxals’]. Indian intelligence agencies and security forces are bearing down with full impunity on workers, lawyers, public intellectuals, journalists and students activists. The situation is akin to a ‘mopping up’ operation to destroy all forms of resistance and protest against the anti-people, pro-capitalist and Brahminical fascist majoritarian policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime.
This article spotlights what is known as the ‘Lucknow Conspiracy Case’ (LCC) that emerged from an FIR or First Information Report (RC 01/2023/NIA-LKW) filed on 19 June 2023, by the under-secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Lucknow to urge the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to investigate ‘alleged reports of concerted attempts by leaders, sympathisers, and over-ground workers of the banned CPI (Maoist) Party working for the revival of the Northern regional bureau of the proscribed party’. In a period of approximately three years, the NIA has raided residences of over thirty activists, and called many for interrogation[1] as well as raided the offices of organisations such as Bhagat Singh Chhatra Ekta Manch and Delhi General Mazdoor Front (DGMF), and arrested three activists.
Ajay Kumar Singhal, lawyer, writer and an anti-displacement activist was arrested on 30 August 2024. Nearly eleven months later, on 29 July 2025, Adivasi labour activist Priyanshu Kashyap[2] was arrested. Documentary film-maker (‘People’s Marx’), Vishal Singh, was arrested just over a month before him, on 22 June 2025 and at the time of writing, was admitted to a specialist hospital after passing through a critical period of deteriorating health while the state dallied with his life.