JNUTA condemns raid on DU prof’s residence in Noida

The JNUTA claimed that police spent an inordinate amount of time going through Mr Babu’s book collection, ultimately settling on confiscating two books that are freely available

The JNU teachers association (JNUTA) on Wednesday condemned the raid conducted at the residence of Delhi University professor Hany Babu in Noida in connection with the 2017 Elgaar Parishad case for alleged Maoist links and called it an attempt “intended to intimidate and harass him”.

A group of students and teachers in Delhi University showed their solidarity with the professor and staged a protest at Arts faculty of DU.

Pune police on Tuesday searched 45-year-old Mr Babu’s house in Sector 78 of Noida, adjoining the national capital. Pune assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar said no arrest was made during the search operation.

The search conducted at his residence is another “shocking episode in the ongoing authoritarian attempts by the current regime to intimidate and silence activists, writers, professors, journalists, and human rights defenders across the country”, the JNUTA said.

“This raid on him also foregrounds the heights that police paranoia about critique and dissent has scaled so much, so that reading and writing are now seen to be suspicious activities,” they said.

The JNUTA claimed that police spent an inordinate amount of time going through Mr Babu’s book collection, ultimately settling on confiscating two books that are freely available in the public domain, and not on any list of banned publications.

JNUTA sees this one act as embodying a message being sent out to all academics.

“If you read (or write) about what a ruling dispensation determines to be impermissible, expect the state to come calling. This message is a warning to all academics to fall in line through selfcensorship on what they read and write and to give up on the academic ideals of rational evaluation as the basis of critique or endorsement, “the teachers’ body said.