Activists, writers, teachers as well as filmmakers and actors condemned the “witch-hunt” against people who participated in the anti-CAA protests in two sets of statements on Sunday.
Demanding the release of student activists, filmmakers and actors such as Mahesh Bhatt, Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Hansal Mehta, Nandita Das, Ratna Pathak Shah and about 20 others signed a statement urging the Delhi Police “to stop abusing the lockdown, respect the human rights of our fellow citizens and put an end to this witch-hunt.”
“In a twisted fairy tale that the Delhi Police is trying to weave” students and activists who had taken part in the anti-CAA protests were being implicated in cases of rioting and communal violence that took place here in February, they said.
“A riot in which the minorities suffered the maximum damage, both in terms of lives and livelihoods, has now become a pretext for the Delhi Police to further witch-hunt activists, most of whom also come from the minority community,” they argued.
Abuse of rights
They called the police actions “inhuman and undemocratic”, an abuse of rights that involved pushing activists to jail while undertrials in many States were being released. In a separate statement, they pointed out the weak basis for particularly targeting Muslim activists and scholars with the use of sedition laws and preventive detention.
The statement signed by Aakar Patel, Anand Patwardhan, Mukul Kesavan, Nandini Sundar and about 17 others, argued that the targeting of people like Sharjeel Imam, Kafeel Khan, Khalid Saifi and others was not a question of instigating violence through their speeches but “a lesson for all Muslims.”
“Fall silent. Be afraid. Learn to accept to live on the terms dictated by a majoritarian State.” it said.
Holes in FIR
The statement picked holes in an FIR allegedly being used to tie anti-CAA activists to the riots that erupted in north-east Delhi, arguing that the “FIR does not speak of any specific act of violence but creates a grand theory of inflammatory speeches, and links these speeches to the outbreak of violence.”
They also pointed out statements made by individuals reportedly charged with sedition, questioning the basis for their arrest and the breakdown of the alleged judicial process in some instances. Stating that Sharjeel Imam’s speech called for at best a roadblock, the statement argued that there were “many other questions in his speech — the nature of leadership, the terms on which solidarity across different social and political groups is to be forged — but these are questions that all movements engage with, and cannot constitute sedition.”
