Condemning Arrests of Activists

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We the undersigned are utterly shocked and appalled by the simultaneous arrests of several prominent civil rights activists in different parts of the country, and the raids on their houses and those of many others. The exact nature of the alleged unlawful activities of those arrested has not been made clear though they are booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; in many instances, even the families are unaware of the charges on which they have been arrested; where some charges have been reported, they appear utterly weird and outlandish; and the documents occasionally mentioned as evidence against them are of highly questionable authenticity. Besides, all those arrested can by no stretch of imagination be said to belong to any one particular group; in fact, the only thing that is common to them is that they have all been in the forefront of the struggle to defend the democratic rights of various oppressed and marginalized sections of society.

The conclusion is inescapable that what is being conducted is a witch-hunt against those who dare to take up the cause of the downtrodden and who dare to criticize the government for trampling upon their rights. While the BJP government in power in the country had until now been implicitly supportive of lynch-mobs targeting minorities and dissident intellectuals, large-scale arrests of critics of the government had been avoided. Even that restraint, it seems, is now being abandoned. The threat that this poses to our democracy is palpable and serious. We condemn these arrests in the strongest and most unequivocal terms, and demand that the arrested civil rights activists be released forthwith. 

 

 

 

 

Irfan Habib
Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Prabhat Patnaik
Vivan Sundaram
M.K. Raina
Sohail Hashmi
Madangopal Singh
Ram Rahman 
Zoya Hasan
D. N. Jha
C.P. Bhambri
Jayati Ghosh
C.P. Chandrasekhar
Geeta Kapur
Saeed Mirza
Sashi Kumar
A. Amarender Reddy
A. Muthukrishnan
Aban Raza
Abhilasha Kumari
Aditya Mukherjee
Ahmar Raza
Alok Rai
Amar Farooqui
Amitesh Kumar
Anand K. Sahay
Anantjeet Kaur
Ananya Vajpeyi
Anil Bhatti
Anil Chandra
Anil Sadgopal
Anita Cherian
Anita Ghai
Antara Dev Sen
Anuradha Kapur
Archana Prasad      
Arjun Dev
Arpana Caur
Arunkumar H.G.
Asghar Wajahat
Asmita Aasaavari
Atlury Murali
Badri Raina
Barnita Bagchi
Brij Tankha
Chanchal Chauhan
Diamond Oberoi Vahali
Pieter Friedrich
Prabhakar Pachpute
Prasanna Ramaswamy
Praveen Jha
Pulin Nayak
Pushpamala N.
Qurban Ali
Radhika Menon
Rahul Roy
Rahul Verma 
Raj Chauhan
Rajeev Bhargava
Rajinder Arora
Rajiv Gupta
Rajni Arora
Rakhi Sehgal
Ramakrishna Chatterjee  
Rana Behal
Rashmi Varma
Rekha Awasthi
Rekha Rodwittiya
Rimli Bhattacharya
Ritambhara Shastri
Roop Rekha Verma
Rukmini Sen
Saba Hasan
Sanjeev Kumar
Santosh Dash
Shabari Rao
Dinesh Abrol
Dinesh Mohan
Dushyant
Gauri Gill
Geetha Mehra
Gernot Wieland
Githa Hariharan
Hilal Ahmed
Indira Arjun Dev
Indira Chandrasekhar       
Iqtidar Alam Khan   
Ira Bhaskar
Jennifer Mirza
Josna T. Jacob
K. L. Tuteja
K. M. Shrimali   
Kamini Tankha
Keval Arora
Kirti Jain        
Kumar Shahani
Lata Singh
Latika Gupta
Laxmi Murthy
Lokesh Khodke
M.M.P. Singh
Madhu Prasad
Mandira Mitra
Mangalesh Dabral
Manish Agarwal
Maseeh Rahman
Maya John
Maya Krishna Rao
Maya Sriram
Mithu Sen
Mohan Rao
Mridula Mukherjee
Mushirul Hasan
N.K. Sharma    
Nadeem Rezavi
Nalini Nayak
Nandini Nayak
Neeladri Bhattacharya
Nilima Sheikh
Nina Rao
O.P. Jaiswal
P.K. Shukla
Parthiv Shah    
Shakti Kak      
Shalin Jain      
Sherna Dastur
Shireen Gandhi 
Shireen Moosvi
Shubhra Chakrabarti
Sidheeq Kappan
Sreelakshmi
Subir Sinha
Sudhanva Deshpande
Sudhir Chandra
Sukirat Anand
Sukumar Murlidharan
Sumangala Damodaran
Sumit Sarkar
Surendran Nair
Suvira Jaiswal 
Tani Bhargava
Tanika
V. Ramakrishna
Valay Singhrai
Vasudha Dalmia
Vasundhara Chauhan
Veer Munshi
Vikas Rawal
Vishwamohan Jha    
Yashodhara Dalmia
Zasha Colah

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