NEW DELHI: Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy could be prosecuted for a 2010 speech about India-held Kashmir after a top official signed off on the move, local media reported Tuesday.

Roy, 61, is one of India’s most famous living authors, but her writing and activism, including her trenchant criticism of PM Narendra Modi’s government, has made her a polarising figure at home.

A criminal complaint accusing her and several others of sedition had languished in India’s notoriously glacial criminal justice system since it was first filed in 2010.

But on Tuesday, Indian media reported that V.K. Saxena, the top official in the administration governing New Delhi, had given approval for the case to proceed before the courts.

RSF condemns detention of Kashmiri journalist under ‘draconian’ Public Safety Act

Saxena’s directive said there was enough evidence for a case to proceed against Roy and her co-defendants “for their speeches at a public function” in the capital, The Hindu newspaper reported.

The original complaint accuses Roy and others of giving speeches advocating the secession of India-held Kashmir from India.

The disputed region is one of the most sensitive topics of public discussion in India, which has fought two wars and countless skirmishes with Pakistan over the territory.

Roy’s home in New Delhi was besieged by protesters in 2010 when her remarks from the panel discussion became public.

Two of her co-defendants have died in the 13 years since the case was first lodged.

Roy became the first non-expatriate Indian to win the prestigious Booker Prize for her acclaimed debut novel The God of Small Things in 1997.

She is also known for her passionate essays on the plight of the poor and dispossessed in India, occasionally earning the ire of the country’s elite.

In recent years her work has marked her as one of the most high-profile critics of Modi’s government, which has been accused by rights groups and others of targeting activists for criminal prosecution and working to suppress free speech.

Reporters Without Borders warns “press freedom is in crisis” in India.

Since 2014, India dropped from 140 to 161 on its rankings of media freedom, including 11 places since last year.

RSF condemns detention

Separately, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Tuesday condemned the arrest of a freelance Kashmiri journalist, who it said has been held arbitrarily for more than three weeks in India-held Kashmir under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA)

Majid ‘Jimmy’ Hyderi’s detention has brought the number of journalists currently held in India-held Jammu and Kashmir to six.

After his arrest by local police in Srinagar on Sept 15 on the basis of an FIR, Mr Hyderi was released on bail the next day, however, he was immediately rearrested under the controversial PSA, which deals with the direct threats to the security of the state.

Mr Hyderi, as former editor of Srinagar-based regional daily Greater Kashmir and a regular contributor to DailyO, a news site aimed at young people, is known for his moderate political views and has often criticised corruption within the Kashmiri bureaucracy.

On Sept 15, his arrest on charges of “criminal conspiracy, intimidation, extortion, giving false information, and defamation” sent a chilling message about the authorities’ intolerance for even mildly critical journalists, potentially leading to a 14-year imprisonment, RSF said in a statement.

The situation turned surreal when, on Sept 16, following his release on bail, he was promptly re-arrested under the Public Safety Act, a controversial 1978 law exclusive to the Jammu and Kashmir region.

This law permits authorities to detain individuals “preventively” for up to two years, without a trial or warrant. Currently, he is confined in Kot Bhalwal, an overcrowded prison located in Jammu, a city with a Hindu-majority population, 300km south of Srinagar.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2023