Teltumbde was born in Rajur, a village in the Yavatmal district of Maharashtra state, to a family of Dalit farm labourers. He is the oldest among eight siblings. He is married to Ramā Yashwant Ambedkar who is the granddaughter of B. R. Ambedkar. He is an Ambedkarite. He earned a mechanical engineering degree from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology in 1973, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1982 and a PhD from the University of Mumbai in cybernetic modelling in 1993 while working as an executive at Bharat Petroleum. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the Karnataka State Open University. Teltumbde was an executive at Bharat Petroleum and managing director of Petronet India Limited before becoming an academic. He was a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and later became a senior professor at the Goa Institute of Management. He contributes a column titled "Margin Speak" to Economic and Political Weekly, and has also contributed to Outlook, Tehelka, and Seminar.
Litigation
On 29 August 2018, the police raided Teltumbde's home, accusing him of having a connection to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence and an alleged Maoist plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Teltumbde denied the allegations but his petition was denied by the Bombay High Court. He was granted interim protection from arrest by the High Court, but he was arrested by the Pune police on 3 February 2019 and released later that day. After his release, Teltumbde accused the government of harassment and of attempting to criminalize dissent. In the course of the investigation, various others have been critical of the handling of the case; Supreme Court JusticeD Y Chandrachud in September 2018, questioned the biased nature of the investigation by the Maharashtra Police. Others such as counter-terrorism expert and Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management, Ajai Sahni suggested the evidence used against Teltumbde seemed fabricated. Teltumbde's mobile phone was hacked by Israeli spyware Pegasus through WhatsApp along with over a dozen other activists, lawyers, and journalists in India. Teltumbe had noticed his phone had been "acting up" and was later contacted by Citizen Lab in October 2019. In February 2019, The Washington Post reported that Teltumbe was arrested as part of "a government crackdown on lawyers and activists" who are critics of Modi. More than 600 scholars and academics issued a joint statement in support of Teltumbde, condemning the government's actions as a "witch-hunt" and demanding an immediate halt to the actions against Teltumbde. In addition, over 150 organizations and intellectuals—including Noam Chomsky and Cornel West—signed a letter to United Nations secretary generalAntonio Guterres, describing the charges as "fabricated" and calling for the UN to intervene. On 16 March 2020, the Supreme Court dismissed Teltumbde's plea for anticipatory bail under the Unlawful Activities Act. The Court gave Teltumbde and Navlakha three weeks to surrender. On 8 April, a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra ordered Teltumbde to surrender to the National Investigation Agency on 14 April. Historians like Romila Thapar condemned the arrest while Amnesty International India expressed its disappointment in light of the UNHCHR guidelines to release all political prisoners due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
