Mumbai: Anand Teltumbde, a faculty member at the Goa Institute of Management and a leading anti-caste writer, has termed his arrest a direct attack on the country’s democracy.Speaking at a press meet organised in Mumbai on February 4, Teltumbde said, “This (his arrest) is the vilest post-independence plot by the state against its own citizens. Arresting me on such flimsy grounds is a direct attack on the country’s democratic principles.”Teltumbde, who has been named as one of the accused in the ‘January 1, 2018, Bhima Koregaon violence case’ was taken into illegal custody by the Pune police on February 2 despite Supreme Court’s protection against his arrest until February 11. He was later released in a few hours after the special court in Pune took the police to task for arbitrarily arresting him.Narrating the February 2 events, Teltumbde said, “I was on my way back from Cochin to Mumbai. I had been invited to give a lecture in a university there. While I was waiting at the Mumbai airport, the police approached me and without any procedures, arrested me. They did not even allow me to make calls to my family and lawyers. It was a humiliating experience.”Also read: Teltumbde’s Arrest is an Insult to the Law, and Intelligence of Ordinary IndiansTeltumbde was the tenth person to be arrested in the case. Nine others, including human rights activists and lawyers, had already been taken into custody last year. The police have accused them all of being “urban Naxals”.The scholar said the accusations against him are wild and a clear attack on an individual’s democratic right to dissent. “The state does not have anything against me in particular. It is against the whole idea of dissent. It is me today, it can be anyone else tomorrow.”“There is nothing like ‘urban Naxals’; this nomenclature itself is a deceptive one, making no sense,” he said when asked about the police’s allegations.This was his first public appearance post his release. Teltumbde, a Goa resident, has approached the Bombay high court for pre-arrest bail.According to the Pune police, several letters were allegedly exchanged among the arrested accused and a few absconding others. These letters had a mention of one ‘comrade Anand’, and they have claimed that the Anand mentioned in the letter is Teltumbde.He rubbished the allegations and said the police’s claims are “unfounded and based on figments of their imagination”. “They (the police) can plant anything on you and claim it was found in your possession. It is a common sense that no one who is involved in underground activities would indulge in such letter writing,” he said.Narrating his ordeal since his house was raided last year along with several other academics and activists across the country, Teltumbde said he was absolutely clueless that he was also under the state’s radar until that point. “I have, since then, approached the Bombay high court to have the FIR against me quashed. I was under the impression that the claims made by the police are so weak that the court will be able to see through them. But the high court did not give me the expected relief. I went to the Supreme Court, which too did not grant me the relief,” he said.He further added that he still believes in the Indian judiciary and, most importantly, the constitution of the country. “I am hopeful that my prayers will be heard and justice will be done,” he added.
