THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in a statement issued on September 26, has strongly condemned the naming of its patron, Brinda Karat, in two disclosure statements filed with a chargesheet by the Delhi police obviously at the behest of the BJP government at the centre and specifically the home ministry. The naming falsely and preposterously seeks to make her also responsible for the communal violence in North East Delhi. This has been based on two supposed disclosure statements which have been procured by the police, who are well known for their coercive tactics, under 161 CrPc and are anyway in law inadmissible in evidence. Respected intellectuals, academicians, journalists and politicians are being systematically falsely implicated through so-called disclosure statements.

The chargesheet relating to the Delhi riots seeks to falsely implicate all those, including the opposition parties, students, academics and others who have been vocal in criticising the CAA, the NRC and the NPR. Instead of implicating those who started the riots, like the BJP’s Kapil Mishra who openly indulged in hate speech and incited violence and was responsible for the riots, it sets up a false narrative that there was a conspiracy to organise riots by the anti CAA protestors. This false narrative is part of a witch hunt to take revenge on those who dared to disagree with the government and exercise their democratic right of freedom of speech and expression in a peaceful manner. The central government has through its police been routinely hounding and jailing anti-CAA activists and protestors like Umar Khalid, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Gulfisha Fatima and others and questioning them and putting them in jails under draconian laws like UAPA.

Disagreement with the policies of the government is not a crime and the right to dissent is a constitutionally guaranteed right. The BJP government cannot stop this dissent by misusing the law in this manner. We in AIDWA have all along been protesting against the anti people policies and laws of the government including the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the NRC and NPR and demand that the government stop criminalising dissent and remove the names of all those who have been falsely implicated in the riots. They must be released from the jails immediately. AIDWA demands an independent probe under a retired judge by a different police force to examine the actual causes of the so-called riots in Delhi in which Muslims were overwhelmingly targeted.