OUTRAGE OVER ARREST OF ACTIVISTS

New Delhi, Aug. 28: The arrests of prominent civil rights activists and multi-city searches of their homes triggered outrage and condemnation by several lawyers, academics and authors today, some who termed the move “absolutely chilling” and others saying it amounted to a “virtual declaration of emergency”.

What is happening is absolutely perilous, said author and Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy after the raids, whichwere carried out as part of a probe into the violence at Maharashtra’s Koregaon-Bhima village, triggered by ‘Elgar Parishad’ event in Pune on December 31 last year.

Searches were carried out at the residences of poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and Chhattisgarh and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in Delhi, a police official in Pune said.

The official said Rao and Bhardwaj were arrested. There were unconfirmed reports about arrests of several other activists in the raids.

“The simultaneous statewide arrests are a dangerous sign of a government that fears it is losing its mandate and is falling into panic. That lawyers, poets, writers, Dalit rights activists and intellectuals are being arrested on ludicrous charges... while those who make up lynch mobs and threaten and murder people in broad daylight roam free, tells us very clearly where India is headed,” Roy told. She added that murderers are being honoured and protected and anybody who speaks up for justice or against Hindu majoritarianism is being made into a criminal.