HYDERABAD: Terming the arrest of 21-year-old Bengaluru-based environmental activist Disha Ravi by the Delhi police in connection with “toolkit” case as “unlawful and an affront to the Constitution,” the Human Right Forum (HRF) condemned the arrest. They alleged that the Delhi police didn’t inform the local authorities about their intentions, similar to a string of other arrests.
The HRF said Ravi’s arrest was a sign of the extent to which the Modi-led government was willing to go to suppress criticism of its policies that adversely affect crores of people and benefit a tiny section of business tycoons.
S Jeevan Kumar and Vemana Vasantha Lakshmi, the coordination committee members of HRF of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh States, in a statement, said, “When the arrest itself was not justified, the consequent remand to police custody for interrogation for five days, without there being any legal assistance to her, is not only unlawful but an affront to the Constitution.”
They said that the BJP government’s “intimidatory tactics” seem to have no bounds. Keeping people who criticise their anti-people policies in jail for years without a trial, after labelling them terrorists, Maoists, anti-national, secessionists, pro-Pakistani is a classic age-old tactic of the current BJP leaders, they said. Further, they alleged that there was every possibility of false evidence being planted against Disha Ravi during her custody.