200 educationists, filmmakers, authors demand release of Umar Khalid
September 24, 2020 20:23
More than 200 educationists, filmmakers and authors, including Noam
Chomsky and Mira Nair, issued a joint statement on Wednesday demanding
the Centre free Umar Khalid arrested in connection with the northeast
Delhi riots.
Besides Chomsky and Nair, the signatories include actor
Ratna Pathak Shah, authors Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati
Roy, and journalist P Sainath.
'We call on the government of India to
free Umar Khalid and all those falsely implicated and unjustly
incarcerated for protesting against the CAA-NRC that denies equal
citizenship rights and to ensure that the Delhi Police investigates the
Delhi riots with impartiality under the oath they took as public
servants bound by the Constitution of India,' the statement
read.
Khalid has been arrested under the stringent Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act in a case related to the communal violence
in northeast Delhi in February this year.
'We stand in solidarity and
outrage, with the brave young scholar and activist Umar Khalid,
arrested in New Delhi on September 14, 2020, under fabricated charges of
engineering the Delhi riots in February 2020,' the statement
said.
The statement said that Khalid 'used the passion of his
commitment to his country, marshalled his education and his voice to
join the movement for equal citizenship, against the Citizenship
Amendment Act (CAA)' which introduced religion as a criterion for
citizenship, and has no place in a secular nation.
The Delhi Police
had on September 13 said it is investigating the role of all individuals
who took part in the February riots and were behind the larger
conspiracy of organising violence and inciting communal passion amongst
communities.
Delhi Police Commissioner S N Shrivastava had last week
said the force has collected documentary evidence, including scientific
evidence, to support its case in connection with the riots.
He said
that the police have so far arrested 1,571 people irrespective of their
caste or religion and they are almost equally distributed among both
communities.
Responding to former IPS officer Julio Ribeiro's letter
in which he had questioned the Delhi police's investigation, Srivastava
had said that there are several entities who have their reasons to weave
a 'web of deception' and push a 'false narrative of bias and
insensitivity' on the part of the police.
He said that police
investigations in criminal cases are guided by facts and evidence, not
by reputations and personalities.
"Delhi Police are serving the oath
and the Constitution with conviction, integrity and sensitivity, without
fear of any self-proclaimed true patriots or favour towards any class,
creed or community," Srivastava had said in an email reply to
Ribeiro.
Communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi on
February 24 after violence between those supporting the citizenship law
and those opposing it spiralled out of control, leaving at least 53
people dead and around 200 injured. -- PTI