Ryan Thomas

Sadhna Uikey is an Adivasi activist from Madhya Pradesh. She has been campaigning alongside thousands of Adivasis against the union government’s Ken–Betwa Link Project, which will channel water from the Ken River in Madhya Pradesh, through a network of waterworks, to the Betwa River in Uttar Pradesh.

MUSHROOM ROCK HAS probably witnessed many changes to its surrounding environment in its roughly 2-billion-year history. But 30 March 2025 was perhaps the first time it bore witness to a brutal police crackdown on a student protest to save the roughly hundred and sixty hectares of forested land around it. The rock, which gets its name due to its distinctive shape, sits inside the campus of the University of Hyderabad, in Kancha Gachibowli.

Chaos unfolded at Jamia Millia Islamia early on the morning of 13 February, as the Delhi Police, accompanied by the university’s security staff, illegally detained 14 students. The students had been protesting against the university administration’s recent measures to restrict student political activity on campus. Upon being detained by the police, the students were split up in smaller groups and taken to different police stations far from the Jamia campus—in Badarpur, Bawana and Fatehpur Beri.