Prakash Ambedkar addressed the Press on 29 February 2020 at 3.00 pm at Maharashtra Sadan, New Delhi

We, the members of family of Babasaheb Ambedkar are concerned about the hounding of Dr Anand Teltumbde, who has been part of us since 1983. When in August 2018 the Pune Police implicated him in the now-infamous Elgar Parishad case, we were aghast but sure that the police would realise their mistake and if it goes to court, the court would quash the case. Over the last two years we reared this notion.  But recently when the High Court rejected his petition and the vehemence with which the Central government took away the case to National Investigation Agency (NIA), the intentions of the state has become clearer that it wants to incarcerate him in jails for years. We are living on a tenuous hope that the Supreme Court where his appeal would be heard during the four-week protection, does the justice.

We wish to make it clear that Dr Anand Teltumbde is a part of Ambedkar family and perhaps therefore the BJP government has targeted him as the softest target to touch the family. We also wish to make it clear that as a candid and original thinker, his opinions may not sound stereotypical but he is Ambedkarite at the core and has contributed to define Babasaheb Ambedkar’s ideas more than any living person today.

As the world knows, coming from a poorest of the poor family of landless labourers, he has earned laurels in academic passing from elite institutions like VNIT, IIM, Ahmedabad and earned his doctoral degree in the frontier science of Cybernetics. He ranks among the best educated persons in the world.

He has an impeccable and unblemished corporate career of four decades rising to the top management positions like Executive Director of Bharat Petroleum corporation and Managing Director & CEO of Petronet India Limited, a holding company that was promoted by the government in private sector. He was severally honoured during his professional career for the outstanding results he produced in each of the positions he held.

As a socially sensitive person, he always took cudgel for oppressed humanity and also earned the name among the foremost civil rights activists in the country. He had been member of the Maharashtra-based Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) for years and was elected as its General Secretary since 2016 even when he was outside Maharashtra. In the process, he has authored numerous articles and published over two dozen books, each of which had been translated in most Indian languages. For the past two decades he ranks among the foremost public intellectuals in the country and one of the noted scholars across the world. In recognition of his public intellectualism, the universities have awarded/nominated him with honorary doctorates.

After his corporate career, he was invited by the hallowed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur as Professor of Business Management. He had been teaching as Guest/ Visiting faculty in his alma mater, equally hallowed, IIM, Ahmedabad for years. After IIT, he was invited by the Goa Institute of Management to start a novel course, which he did in 2018 launching India’s first Big Data Analytics Programme in Management. It also brought him many laurels as before.

Such a person has been implicated in the fabricated case of Elgar Parishad, which he did not even attend. When he was illegally arrested by the Police, there was a wave of protests across the world at unprecedented scale. The process of Elgar Parishad case has amply revealed the fabrication of case. The case that stood on the confiscated digital devices, which in absence of the hash values remained wide open to be manipulated by the police must have been dismissed at the inception itself. But under the plea that it would be dealt with at the time of trial and misusing the provisions of the draconian law like UAPA which does not allow anticipatory bail, the innocent persons are held in jail for years. It may be noted that unlike other accused in this infamous case, nothing has been recovered from him and he stands already interrogated over two days at the instance of the High Court. However, the case is persisted with extreme amoral zeal.

We are extremely concerned for his life, and the suffering of his family if he is arrested and incarcerated like others. We call upon the entire Ambedkarite people to raise their voice taking it as the attack on Ambedkar family and the attempt to defile the legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar.