Intellectuals protest arrest of Setalvad, Sreekumar
TRIVANDRUM: A group of public intellectuals from Kerala led by ace film maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan has protested the continued detention of Teesta Setalvad and RB Sreekumar.
The police arrested them last month ater the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that cleared Prime Minister Narendra Modi of complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Setalvad is a leading activist while Sreekumar headed the western state’s police intelligence when Modi was the chief minister.
The apex court, in its verdict, had observed that they wanted “to keep the pot boiling for ulterior design.”
“The arrest of Setalvad and Sreekumar is part of an agenda to suppress dissenting voices and to overwhelm the civil rights of citizens,” they said in a joint statement.
“All those who believe in secular and democratic values should protest against the prevailing undeclaring emergency situation and flagrant autocratic system.”
They said Setalvad, a recipient of Padma Shri, India’s third highest civilian honour, had been working at ensuring peace and communal harmony in Gujarat.
“She had been engaged in rehabilitating victims of the Gujarat riots and in fighting legal batles to ensure justice to them,” the statement said.
They said Sreekumar, “who was familiar with the chronology of the riots,” had been at the forefront of bringing out “several truths which the rulers wanted to cover up.”
“The arrest is part of an agenda to suppress dissenting voices and to overwhelm the civil rights of citizens,” it said.
Some 92 retired bureaucrats had earlier this month issued a similar statement saying the verdict “has, to say the least, let citizens totally disturbed and dismayed.”
The “constitutional conduct group” said they were “deeply anguished by some of the contents of that judgement and the arrests that have followed in its wake.”
The apex court made the observation while dismissing a plea of Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed during the riots.
“It is not just the dismissal of the appeal that has surprised people - an appeal may, ater all, be allowed or dismissed by an appellate court,” it said.
“It is the gratuitous comments that the (three-member) bench has pronounced on the appellants and the counsel and the supporters of the appellants.” More than 1,000 people died in what’s known as India’s worst outbreak of communal religious violence ater a train fire killed 63 Hindu pilgrims.