Stop harassing Teesta Setalvad, top intellectuals tell government

• Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, Hindustan Times, Kolkata
• A group of prominent intellectuals from India and abroad, including linguist Noam Chomsky, have issued a statement in solidarity with social activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, saying they are “shocked to see this persisting spirit of vendetta against an effort to enforce legal and moral accountability for … massacre in Gujarat”.
  Setalvad and Anand grabbed headlines following the 2002 Gujarat riots for standing by the victims and exposing the role of the state administration, attracting global attention.
  
  Titled “Politics of Vendetta Shall not Defeat the Cause of Justice”, the statement was signed by Chomsky, historians Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar, economist Amiya Bagchi, Prabhat Patnaik, and Ashok Mitra, noted Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock, film-maker Kumar Sahani and screenwriter Saeed Mirza, among others.
  
  “Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, who have fought a long and heroic battle to advance the cause of justice for Gujarat’s 2002 pogrom, face possible prosecution on charges of financial misappropriation. We see this as a clear case of the politics of vendetta launched with explicit intent to whitewash and efface from public memory the misdeeds of those who today wield political power in the state and centre,” they wrote in the statement issued on Monday.
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• http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/stop-harassing-teesta-setalvad-top-intellectuals-tell-government/story-qS6NkILkvbEPbzDNWEbX8O.html