Prime Minister of India: Stop arrest of Professor Dr Anand Teltumbde

Professor Dr Anand is a IIM-A alumnus, IIT Professor, Executive Director of BPCL, Ex-MD & CEO of Petronet India, Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics in GIM, author of 26 books, columnist in EPW, writer of innumerable articles, a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, Leading Public Intellectual and Democratic and Educational Rights Activist. Now he is facing imminent threat of arrest as an ‘Urban Maoist’

The appeal for quashing the false FIR against Dr Anand, filed by the Pune Police was rejected on 14 January by the Supreme Court and gave four weeks to seek pre-arrest bail from the competent court. Until now Anand felt confident that whatever charges the Police levied could be proved as criminal fabrication once they landed before the court.

The  arrest under the UAPA can mean years of incarceration. Even a hardened criminal can get away with his crime with a metered punishment of a year or two but an innocent person merely for the police, invariably acting at the behest of political bosses, claim that they have evidence against him could keep him/her for years in jail. The arrest  is not simply the hardship of prison life, it is keeping him away from  his laptop which has been integral with his body, from his library which has been part of  his  life, half-written manuscripts of books committed to various publishers,  his research papers which are in various stages of completion,  his students who staked their future on  his professional reputation, his  institute that invested so much resources in his name and recently took him on its Board of Governors, and  his  numerous friends and of course  his  family— his  wife, who, as the granddaughter of Babasaheb Ambedkar hardly bargained for this fate and daughters who are already disturbed not knowing whatever that has been happening to him since August last year.