BENGALURU: Climate activist Disha Ravi returned to Bengaluru on Saturday, exactly a month after she was arrested by the Delhi police from her house in the City in the controversial toolkit case.
She spoke to her family friend and advocate R Prasanna. “She told me that she wanted to put out a statement on social media. She sounded okay and comfortable in her skin,” said Prasanna. Disha later tweeted a four-page statement on her Twitter handle on what she went through after her arrest.
‘TRP-seekers pronounced me guilty’
“I kept asking myself what it felt like to be there at that particular moment in time, but I came back with no answers. I had coerced myself into believing that the only way I would be able to live through this was by tricking myself into thinking that this wasn’t happening to me,” she tweeted. Disha has narrated her mental state and resolve to face the tough time she went through standing in the courtroom when, “desperately searching for my lawyers, I came to terms with the fact that I would have to defend myself.
I had no idea whether there was legal assistance available, so when the judge asked me if I have anything to say, I decided to speak my mind. Before I knew it, I was sent to five days in police custody,” the 22-year-old activist tweeted. She narrated her ordeal that unfolded later. “It’s no surprise that in the days that followed, my autonomy was violated, my photographs were splashed all over the news, my actions were pronounced guilty – not in the court of law, but on flat screens by the seekers of TRPs,” she said.
Locked in a cell in Tihar jail, Disha “wondered when it became a crime to think the most basic elements of sustenance on this planet were as much mine as theirs? Why were millions paying the ultimate price for the greed of a few hundred?” she asked. “We are inching towards our own expiry if we did not act in time to stop the endless consumption and greed,” she pondered.
Disha expressed her gratitude to the people who came out in her support and fought her case pro bono. “What of all those still in jail whose stories are not marketable? What of the marginalised that are not worthy of your screen time?” Disha posted. “It’s been a tough time for the family. Disha hasn’t slept well in the last one month. She is home today and resting,” said lawyer Prasanna.