Opposition leaders, activists express solidarity with Newsclick founder Prabir Purkayastha

New Delhi: The opposition leaders and activists on Saturday expressed solidarity with Newsclick founder Prabir Purkayastha and accused the ruling BJP of crushing dissent.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, party leader Brinda Karat, CPI general secretary D Raja, AAP leader Gopal Rai, former IAS officer and activist Harsh Mander, and senior journalist P Sainath were among those who expressed solidarity with Purkayastha, who was arrested in October 2023, following raids on Newsclick.

Yechury said that his friendship with Purkayastha goes back to his days in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and recalled he was also arrested during emergency.

"We are not just here to express solidarity with a person... he has played an important role in all people's movements," Yechury said.

"In my last speech in the Parliament, I said it's our responsibility not to make India a Hindu Pakistan. We have to save ourselves. Voices like Prabir are needed to ensure that," he added.

Yechury said arrests are being made without evidences, adding that the account of the Thrisur unit of CPI(M) was frozen on the eve of the election.

"Today, order was issued to freeze the bank account of our Thrisur district committee. They have not revealed the reason, they say under new law, they are not required to answer," Yechury said.

"They want to change the character of independent India. Changing it into Hindu rashtra is their aim," he added.

AAP leader Gopal Rai also slammed the Union government for trying to crush dissent and the opposition for raising people's voice.

"There's an attack on opposition across the country. The Modi government was here five years ago as well, but the ED was not a household name. What has changed? The ED and Modi are one, it's difficult to differentiate," Rai said.

"Five years ago their target was to suppress voices of dissent, they created fear... But they saw who was becoming the voice of farmers, Adivasis, students," he added.

Escalating his attack on the ruling BJP, Rai said, "Elected Delhi CM is in jail, there is no evidence, no facts, Modi was saying I want to finish corruption... If someone is saving the corrupt in this country it's the BJP."

Meanwhile, CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat said that Purkayastha, 75, has asthma and suffered lungs infection four times recently.

"I met him twice in jail, his health condition was serious. He is an asthma patient, he had chest infection four times recently," Karat said.

"These people killed Stan Swami in jail, now they're claiming his situation is stable...," she added.

The CPI(M) leader accused the government of setting all agencies, including the ED, CBI and Special Branch of Delhi Police.

"When everything failed they arrested him under the black law UAPA," she said.

Veteran journalist and activist P Sainath said Purkayastha was targeted for being a rationalist.

"In times of fundamentalism we live in, they hate few people more than rationalists. Secularists live on margin, rationalist puncture their balloon," he said.

Sainath named journalists like Narendra Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh who were assassinated, and said, "being a rationalist was Prabir's crime".

Harsh Mander, D Raghunandan, Prabhat Patnaik, CPIML leader Sucheta De and All India Forward Bloc general secretary D Deverajan were also among those who attended the opposition meeting.

Delhi Police on March 30 filed its first chargesheet, spread across about 8,000 pages, in the UAPA case against Newsclick and its founder Prabir Purkayastha for allegedly running Chinese propaganda, naming him and the firm owning the portal as accused.

The Delhi Police Special Cell had last year registered a case under sections 13, 16, 17, 18 and 22 of the UAPA along with sections 153A and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the matter.

It also arrested NewsClick's founder Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakravarty on October 3, 2023.

In January this year, the court allowed Chakravarty's application seeking permission to turn an approver.