New Delhi: Activist and professor Sudha Bharadwaj, one of the five arrested in multi-city raids by the Maharashtra Police on Tuesday and now under house arrest, has responded to the police’s claims and said that the letter the police read out on Friday claiming that it was written by her was “totally concocted” to criminalise her and other human rights lawyers and organisations.
In a handwritten statement shared through her lawyer Vrinda Grover, Ms Bharadwaj said that the letter, which the police said was written by her to one “Com Prakash”, was a “mixture of innocuous and publicly available facts and baseless fabrication”.
She also said that legal and democratic activities such as meetings, seminars, protests “have been sought to be delegitimised by alleging they are funded by Maoists.”
The police raided the homes of activists and lawyers from five states —Varavara Roa in Hyderabad, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, Bharadwaj in Fariadabad and Gautam Navalakha in Delhi.
The activist-lawyer said that the “fabricated letter” had not been brought before either before the Pune court or the Faridabad Chief Judicial Magistrate while seeking to “whisk” her to Pune.
