New Delhi, December 30: Writer-activist Arundhati Roy today condemned conviction of rights activist Binayak Sen, who was sentenced by a Raipur court to life imprisonment for sedition, saying the evidence produced and the judgement were just not connected to each other.
“The evidence was so weak…Even Narayan Sanyal who seems to be the kingpin around whom the whole sedition case was built up was not accused of sedition when Binayak was arrested,” she said.
“In some way it (the verdict) was a declaration…It was not a judgment…It was a warning to others,” she told in an interview to CNN-IBN.
She said a situation has been created where definition of anti-national and doing something for the greater common good are completely conflicted and corrupted.
“If you are talking, lets say about the Maoists who are a banned party…Why are they banned? Because they believe in violence. But today’s papers talk about Hindutva elements being involved in the Samjhauta blast.”
“Even mainstream political parties have been involved in acts of heinous violence, even amounting to genocide but they are not banned. So what you choose to ban and what you choose not to ban are all political decisions,” Roy said.
Today, the situation is the government and the economic policies are performing anti-constitutional activity, she said.
–PTI