The Indian „National Investigation Agency“ (NIA), a special organization tasked with the repression of critics and revolutionaries, claimed on the 2nd of August, that Delhi University Professor Hany Babu M. T., who was arrested on July 28th „was found to be a co-conspirator along with other accused persons propagating Naxal activities and Maoist ideology.“
Renown writer and social activist Arundhati Roy criticised this “relentless and ongoing incarceration of activists, academics and lawyers”, especially in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad cases (the cases against so-calles “urban naxalites”, Revolutionaries, who are on trial solely for their ideology, without any proof of criminal activities). This trial, so Roy, is nothing but a “blatant witch hunt”. “The police made stunning claims, including that those arrested – poets, trade unionists, writers, and academics – had been planning to assassinate the Prime Minister.”
Babu teaches in the Delhi University’s English department and is well-known as an anti-caste activist. He is a member of the committee formed to defend GN Saibaba, a revolutionary intellectual who is currently serving a life term in Nagpur for his alleged links to the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Arundhati Roy said, that the Modi government’s politics has led India “into a crisis that has blighted the lives of hundreds of millions of people which ironically includes its own supporters”. The Modi government’s fear of these activists stems from the knowledge that the “nascent, emerging secular, anti-caste and anti-capitalist politics that these people represent provides an alternative narrative to Hindu fascism”
The accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad cases are: Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha and now, Hany Babu.
Freedom for all accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad cases!
Freedom for all political prisoners in India!
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