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Arundhati Roy joined
a host of academicians, lawyers and human rights activists in defence of
suspended Delhi University lecturer Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, a co-accused in
the December 13 attack on Parliament. She is now part of the All India Defence
Committee for SAR Geelani, a group that boasts of such names as academician
Rajni Kothari, social worker Aruna Roy and lawyer Nandita Haksar. The trial in
the Parliament attack case is on and the committee organised a meeting in Delhi
to inform the media about the facts of the case. "It is our concern for human
rights and civil liberties that motivated me and others to come out in defence
of Dr Geelani. He had no history of being involved in any crime or anti-national
activities. There is no doubt that he has been framed," Professor Rajni Kothari,
who heads the committee, told. Arundhati Roy, during the time she spent in Tihar
jail in a contempt of court case, had met Navjot aka Afshan Guru, a Sikh girl
from Delhi, who is married to another Parliament attack case accused Showket
Guru. "She was five or six months pregnant, her condition was horrifying. It
took me 45 minutes to get her to speak. I asked her if she had a lawyer. All she
managed to say was: ‘Mere paas towliaya nahin hai’ (‘I don’t have a towel’),"
Roy said. The writer-activist said she is convinced that Geelani has been
framed. "The people who framed him are the real terrorists. We need to come out
in defence of Dr Geelani not only till he is acquitted, but will have to see
that the policemen who booked him are punished too. We need to win for the sake
of democracy and civil liberties...at least once, at least one case," she said.
Criminal lawyer Seema Gulati, who is defending Geelani, maintained that the
police investigations in the case have been shoddy and that there is no concrete
evidence linking Geelani to the attack on Parliament. Geelani was arrested
because his cell phone number was found in the call records of another
co-accused. "That accused happened to be from Geelani’s home town and had
studied in Delhi University around the same time as Geelani...they knew each
other," Gulati said. Geelani’s wife, who described herself as a housewife,
narrated how she and her children were picked up by the police on December 15,
soon after her husband was arrested. "We were taken to the Lodhi colony police
station and policemen tortured him [her husband] in front of me and the
children...they wanted him to confess," she said. The Central Universities
Teachers Association president Prof Kamal Mitra Chenoy, who was present at the
meeting, said the teachers’ fraternity stands solidly behind Geelani. He also
apologised for his and other teachers’ initial reluctance to support Geelani’s
case.
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