Daily Dawn Report + Dawn TV News
Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy said in one of her speeches that the Kashmir region had never been an “integral part of India”.
Dawn TV report
MUMBAI: A top Indian official has given formal permission to prosecute well-known author Arundhati Roy, who is facing charges under anti-terrorism laws for making an inflammatory speech in 2010.
The 62-year-old Booker Prize-winning novelist Rai is a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi administration’s controversial policies and laws targeting minorities. Along with this, she also talks about the widespread social injustices in India.
The allegations relate to a program on Kashmir held in Delhi in 2010. Roy and a former professor of international law from Kashmir, Sheikh Shaukat Hussain, spoke under a banner that read ‘Azadi (The Only Way).’
Rai said in his speech that the Kashmir region, which is fully claimed by both India and Pakistan and partially administered by both, has never been an ‘integral part of India’.
Rai’s prosecution was authorized by Delhi’s most senior official, VK Saxena, a politician from Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP party and serving as lieutenant governor.
