Book review: Anand Teltumbde’s memoir shows why prison is a mirror image of society, except the delusion of freedom
Acquitted in the 7/11 Mumbai blasts case, a prison rights activist reviews the prison memoir of another - a searing reading on intellectual stifling, of loosening faith in the judiciary, and why the Bhima Koregaon case is a landmark indeed.
Abdul Wahid Shaikh
Published on: 18 October 2025, 06:16 am
ANAND TELTUMBDE’S ‘THE CELL AND THE SOUL’ is not just a prison memoir., it is a mirror to the Indian state, society and criminal justice system.
It refrains from fitting into the neat category of carceral literature, refusing to limit itself into description of everyday mundane life of prison. The book begins not inside the prison cell but long before it, tracing the slow tightening of the State’s grip on dissenting minds. Written during his 31-month incarceration in Taloja Jail under the Bhima Koregaon case as one of the acclaimed ‘BK-16’, it is as much an account of confinement as it is an investigation of the democracy that produced it.
The memoir opens with a chilling domestic scene: Teltumbde is woken from sleep by his wife, who has just received a call from the Director of the Goa Institute of Management (‘GIM’). The Pune Police have raided the campus — and broken into their house. The description of that moment, cold and factual, carries the weight of a life upturned. Watching a raid on television is one thing; having it at your door, Teltumbde writes, is “like fluid from a festering wound seeping into your being.”
The book’s emotional core lies in Teltumbde’s disbelief. He cannot fathom that a man like him — a professor of Big Data Analytics, an IIM alumnus, a corporate professional and a practitioner of Capitalism — could be treated as an enemy of the State. “I was under the delusion,” he admits, “that because of my qualifications, integrity, and public image, I might not qualify for arrest.”
This moment of naïveté , becomes the entry point into a deeper philosophical inquiry: What kind of democracy imprisons its thinkers?
When Teltumbde’s anticipatory bail is rejected, he realises the inevitability of his arrest. From that point, the narrative takes on the rhythm of resignation. His first court hearing captures the innocence of a man who still believes in the rule of law. Dressed in executive attire, he hopes the Court will see “the absurdity of the charges”. But the State, he realizes, sees nothing and everything — and does what it is told to do.
“I was under the delusion,” he admits, “that because of my qualifications, integrity, and public image, I might not qualify for arrest.”
Inside Taloja Jail, Teltumbde’s transformation begins. Accused No. 10, stripped of agency, learns to observe. Like an ethnographer of his own captivity, he turns his gaze outward — towards the broken bodies and resilient spirits of his co-prisoners. He finds in their stories a microcosm of India’s systemic decay: the cruelty of warders, the casual corruption of the staff, the endless bureaucratic humiliation, delays and buck passing. His reflections echo the writings of his co-accused, Sudha Bharadwaj, whose prison notes chronicled the lives of seventy-six women she encountered behind bars. Both find in the carceral space a brutal mirror of the society outside.
Teltumbde’s analysis extends beyond the prison walls. He draws parallels between underreported Covid-19 deaths inside jails and those outside, arguing that the same callousness governs both. The prison, for him, is not an exception but an epitome — a concentrated image of India’s moral collapse.
“Prison is a mirror image of society,” he writes, “except that it does not pretend to be free.”
