Over 375 intellectuals demand release of ‘political prisoners’
NEW DELHI: More than 375 filmmakers, academicians, lawyers and activists have written an open letter calling for the release of prominent rationalists and anti-government protesters, some of whom have now been imprisoned for over a year and been denied bail in cases where they have been named as accused by law enforcement agencies.
The signatories of the letter include prominent members of the cultural community like Soumitra Chatterjee, Naseeruddin Shah, Nandita Das, Ratna Pathak Shah, Prakash Raj, Amol Palekar, T.M. Krishna, Aparna Sen, Arundhati Roy, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and Anurag Kashyap among others.
The letter highlighted that their main point of concern was the "political detention" of rationalists like Varavara Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj, Shoma Sen, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalvez, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Sudhir Dhawale and Rona Wilson, who have been arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case and continue to be detained, some without basic rights like being allowed to speak to their legal counsel; the letter said, "These activists, many of them eminent scholars, writers and poets, have worked for the welfare of India's poorest and most marginalised people over decades. Yet they have been turned into political prisoners and incarcerated. They have not been granted bail despite the fact that in the prisons of Maharashtra where they are being detained, some inmates have died and many others have tested positive for COVID-19." Academicians like Romila Thapar, lawyers like Indira Jaising and activists such as Harsh Mander and Aruna Roy have also signed the letter, which said, "These activists are not convicted criminals. Nor are they planning to flee the country and escape the law. We demand that they be granted bail immediately on humanitarian grounds as their lives are at risk at a time when a pandemic is raging across the country." The signatories also highlighted the continued detention of anti-caa activists in Delhi such as Safoora Zargar and other students of JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia. In fact, while the American Bar Association has called the detention of Zargar a violation of international law, the Human Rights Watch, in a scathing indictment of the Delhi Police had released a statement, alleging that the law enforcement authority in the Capital was biased in its selective prosecution in the Delhi riots cases.
The HRW had said, "Police have used draconian anti-terrorism, sedition, and other laws against students, activists, and other government critics, but have not acted against violence by supporters of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In some cases, the police filed new charges after activists were granted bail to ensure that they remained in custody, placing them at further risk during the Covid-19 outbreak in overcrowded prisons with inadequate sanitation, hygiene, and access to medical care."