On 21 Oct 2010, a one-day seminar was held at the LTG Auditorium, Mandi House, New Delhi by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners. It was held in the aftermath of a brutal summer in Kashmir where more than 100 teenagers were killed by security forces. The seminar was titled Azadi: The Only Way. Thirteen speakers, including SAR Geelani, Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy, and former professor of international law at Central University of Kashmir Sheikh Showkat Hussain spoke at the seminar; two speakers included members of Dal Khalsa, Amritsar. Roy clearly called the Kashmiri Pandit exodus a tragedy and spoke about justice for all. Soon after, right-wing Kashmiri Pandit Sushil Pandit filed a case with the police accusing Roy and others of sedition. The case languished until recently when VK Saxena, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, approved the case to proceed before the courts against two speakers – Roy and Hussain. Roy, 61, is one of India’s most famous living authors, but in her writing and activism, she is also known for her trenchant criticism of PM Modi’s government. This case against her being reopened now seems vindictive as it has come on the heels of Roy being present in the demonstrations against NewsClick’s editor Purkayastha and human resource head Chakraborty’s arrest under UAPA with a sign around her neck that read Free the Press. Panjab – especially farmer unions – also protested these arrests because the FIR linked the raid and arrests to NewsClick’s support for the Farmers’ Protest 2020-21.
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