NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha | Prabir Purkayastha via Facebook
The opposition leaders and activists on Saturday expressed solidarity with Newsclick founder Prabir Purkayastha and accused the ruling BJP of suppressing dissent.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, party leader Brinda Karat, CPI general secretary D Raja, AAP leader Gopal Rai, former IAS officer and activist Harsh Mander, and senior journalist P Sainath were among those who expressed solidarity with Purkayastha, who was arrested in October 2023, following raids on Newsclick.
Yechury said his friendship with Purkayastha dates back to his days at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and recalled that he was also arrested during an emergency.
“We are not here just to express solidarity with one person… he has played an important role in all people’s movements,” Yechury said.
“In my last speech in Parliament, I said that it is our responsibility not to make India a Hindu Pakistan. We have to save ourselves. Voices like Prabir are needed to ensure that,” he added.
Yechury said arrests are being made without evidence, adding that the accounts of CPI(M)’s Thrisur unit were frozen on the eve of elections.
“Today an order has been issued to freeze the bank account of our Thrisur district committee. They have not revealed the reason, they say they are not obliged to answer under the new law,” Yechury said.
“They want to change the character of independent India. Turning it into a Hindu Rashtra is their goal,” he added.
AAP leader Gopal Rai also slammed the Union government for trying to stifle dissent and the Opposition for raising the voice of the people.
“There is an attack on the opposition across the country. The Modi government was also here five years ago, but the ED was not a household name. What has changed? The ED and Modi are one, it is difficult to distinguish make,” Rai said.
“Five years ago, their aim was to suppress voices of dissent, they created fear… But they saw who became the voice of farmers, Adivasis, students,” he added.
Escalating his attack on the ruling BJP, Rai said, “The elected Delhi CM is in jail, there is no evidence, no facts, Modi said I want to end corruption… If anyone is the corrupt in this country saves, it is the BJP.”
Meanwhile, CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat said Purkayastha, 75, has asthma and has recently suffered four lung infections.
“I met him twice in prison, his health condition was serious. He is an asthmatic and he recently had four respiratory infections,” Karat said.
“These people killed Stan Swami in jail, now they claim his condition is stable…,” she added.
The CPI(M) leader accused the government of creating all agencies, including the ED, CBI and Special Branch of Delhi Police.
“When everything failed, they arrested him under the black law UAPA,” she said.
Veteran journalist and activist P. Sainath said Purkayastha was targeted because he was a rationalist.
“In the times of fundamentalism we live in, few people hate more than rationalists. Secularists live on the margins, rationalists burst their balloon,” he said.
Sainath named journalists like Narendra Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh who were murdered and said, “Being a rationalist was Prabir’s crime”.
Harsh Mander, D Raghunandan, Prabhat Patnaik, CPIML leader Sucheta De and All India Forward Bloc general secretary D Deverajan were also among those who attended the opposition meeting.
The Delhi Police on March 30 filed its first chargesheet, spanning around 8,000 pages, in the UAPA case against Newsclick and its founder Prabir Purkayastha for allegedly running Chinese propaganda, involving him and the company that owns it portal as accused persons.
The Special Cell of Delhi Police had registered a case in the matter last year under Sections 13, 16, 17, 18 and 22 of the UAPA, along with Sections 153A and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
It also arrested NewsClick’s founder Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakravarty on October 3, 2023.
In January this year, the court granted Chakravarty’s application seeking permission to become an approver.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: April 6, 2024 | 8:43 PM IST