The police in the State of Maharashtra, India, acting at the behest of the BJP Hindutva government at the centre and the State, has named Professor Dr Anand Teltumbde in a totally fabricated FIR (First Information Report) accusing him of involvement with the violence at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the trumped up charges against him.
Following the filing of the FIR, several fabricated letters addressed to a “Comrade Anand” were released to the media by the police as ‘evidence’ to justify his imminent arrest. These so-called letters appear to accuse him of being associated with the Communist Party of India – Maoist, which has long been banned by the Indian State. These charges by the police have been robustly refuted by Dr Teltumbde who has provided documentary proof against the charges. Notwithstanding this proof, the false charges have continued in a concerted campaign which we believe is to intimidate and silence Dr Teltumbde and not in keeping with the Constitution of India. His arrest under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is now imminent. This could result him in being jailed without bail for years on the basis of fabricated charges with no evidence. This is a fundamental human rights violation.
Prof Dr Teltumbde is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad, worked as executive director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, was managing director and CEO of Petronet India Ltd, an energy concern, was professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur for five years, is currently designated senior professor, Goa Institute of Management, specialises in Data Analytics as well as in Dalit politics. He is an author, who has a long list of books to his credit and writes a column for the prestigious Economic & Political weekly. He is a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, leading public intellectual and democratic and educational rights activist. This great intellectual now faces an imminent threat of arrest, being branded an ‘Urban Maoist’ in the vilest post-independence plot by the state.
He is a researcher of Dr B R Ambedkar’s writings and is committed to the mission to annihilate the caste system, which for centuries has inflicted gross injustice on the Dalit population of India and wherever in the world the South Asian diaspora have settled including the UK. Dr Teltumbde has written and spoken with intellectual rigor against the Brahmanical order and the exploitative Indian socio-economic and cultural system for the past forty years. The Maharashtra police have falsely accused him of involvement with the violence at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018. On 31st August 2018, similar false letters were used to arrest five other democratic rights activists – Sudha Bharawaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira – who are being held in prison facing charges under the draconian UAPA and labeled as ‘Urban Maoist’. Dr Teltumbe’s home was raided at the time of these activists’ arrests but he was not at home. These arrests followed earlier arrests and detention in June 2018, of other democratic and human rights activists implicated as ‘Urban Maoist’.
The following UK organisations:
- stand in solidarity with Dr Teltumbde
- strongly condemn the threatened arrest of Dr Teltumbde and demand that the Maharashtra government should immediately drop all charges (including those under UAPA) against Dr Teltumbde,
- demand prompt release of all political and democratic rights activists languishing in Indian jails, and
- demand the repeal of all undemocratic and draconian Indian laws such as the UAPA.
Signed by:
- Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance, Great Britain
- Federation of Ambedkar and Buddhist Organisations, Great Britain
- Indian Workers Association, Great Britain
