SAHMAT Condemns the Arrests of Activists

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