Former JNU leader Umar Khalid.
Key points
- The signers include Noam Chomsky, Mira Nair, Ratna Pathak Shah, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and P Sainath.
- Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava said last week that the force has documentary evidence to validate the case of riots.
- So far, 1,571 people have been arrested in connection with the violence regardless of their caste or religion.
New Delhi: More than 200 academics, authors and filmmakers, including Noam Chomsky and Mira Nair from the United States, have issued a joint statement demanding the central government release former JNU leader and activist Umar Khalid in connection with the Delhi riots case.
Through the statement released on Thursday, they urged the Center to release “all those falsely implicated and unjustly imprisoned for protesting against the CAA-NRC.”
“We call on the Government of India to release Umar Khalid and all those falsely implicated and wrongfully imprisoned for protesting the CAA-NRC which denies equal citizenship rights and to ensure that the Delhi police investigate the riots in Delhi impartially and under oath as public servants subject to the Constitution of India, ”their statement read.
The signatories also include actor Ratna Pathak Shah, authors Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, and journalist and social activist P Sainath.
“We sympathize with and are outraged by the brave young academic and activist Umar Khalid, arrested in New Delhi on September 14, 2020, on trumped-up charges of manipulating the Delhi riots in February 2020,” the statement further said, news agency . PTI reported.
He stated that Khalid “used the passion of his commitment to his country, ordered his education and his voice to join the movement for equal citizenship, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)” which brought religion as a ‘ criterion for citizenship ‘, and that it has no place in a secular country.
Khalid was arrested earlier this month under the strict Illegal Activity (Prevention) Act in a case related to community violence in northeast Delhi in February this year.
Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava had said last week that the force has documentary and scientific evidence to validate its case in relation to the communal clashes, adding that so far 1,571 people have been arrested regardless of their caste or religion. .
“The Delhi Police are fulfilling the oath and the Constitution with conviction, integrity and sensitivity, without fear of any self-proclaimed ‘true patriot’ or favor towards any class, creed or community,” Srivastava said in response to former IPS officer Julio Ribeiro . who had challenged the Delhi police investigation into the matter.
