Famed author Arundhati Roy faces prosecution in India

The Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy faces prosecution in India for a speech about India-Occupied Kashmir she gave 13 years ago after a top official approved the move, local media reported on Wednesday.

A “social activist” from India-Occupied Kashmir filed a police complaint in 2010 following speeches by Roy and three others at a conference organised by a rights group, the reports said.

Arundhati Roy, a fierce critic of India’s policy in Occupied Kashmir, is accused of saying at the conference that the disputed Himalayan territory was not an integral part of India, which is a truth.

Under Indian laws, the state government’s permission is needed for prosecution of certain crimes, including hate speech, sedition, and promoting enmity.

Vinai Kumar Saxena, the federally-appointed lieutenant-governor (LG), has allowed Delhi Police to prosecute Roy and Central University of Kashmir professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain under laws relating to promoting enmity, making assertions prejudicial to national integration and causing public mischief, the reports said.

Another professor and a hardline Kashmiri leader named in the complaint have since died.

The reports did not say why Saxena approved the prosecution after 13 years.

His office did not respond to calls and emails from Reuters requesting comment.

Arundhati Roy, 61, won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1997. She is also an outspoken political and rights activist and regularly writes in Indian and foreign publications.

There was no reaction from her to the developments and she could not be reached for comment.

Although the case was registered before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power in 2014, the sanction has once again stoked concerns about freedom of speech under Modi’s government.

Opposition leaders and writers came out in support of Roy.

“It is obvious that the LG (and his masters) have no place in their regime for tolerance or forbearance; or for that matter the essentials of democracy,” P. Chidambaram, a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party who was India’s home (interior) minister in 2010, posted on X.

मैंने 2010 में सुप्रसिद्ध लेखिका और पत्रकार सुश्री अरुंधति रॉय के भाषण पर जो कहा था, उस पर आज भी कायम हूं।

तब उनके खिलाफ देशद्रोह के आरोप में मामला दर्ज करने का कोई औचित्य नहीं था।

अब उनके खिलाफ अभियोजन की मंजूरी देने का कोई औचित्य नहीं है।

राजद्रोह का कानून माननीय सर्वोच्च…

— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) October 10, 2023