'Pronounced guilty by seekers of TRP': Disha Ravi

Bengaluru: Climate activist Disha Ravi, who was arrested by the Delhi Police in February in relation to a ‘toolkit’, an online document intended to help amplify the ongoing farmers’ protest, on Saturday hit out at the “seekers of TRPs” for “violating” her autonomy, and added that no matter how long it takes, the truth “always reveals itself”.

The 24-year-old, who is a part of the Indian wing of Fridays for Future, a global climate change movement founded by Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, was arrested in Bengaluru on February 13 and charged with sedition, criminal conspiracy and inciting to riot. Police said Ravi, along with two other activists, created a ‘toolkit’ to spread misinformation and incite unrest as part of a global conspiracy. A Delhi court granted her bail on February 13, saying there was “scanty” and “sketchy” evidence to back the charges leveled against her and adding that citizens couldn’t be jailed simply because they disagreed with government policies.

In a statement published on her social media accounts, Ravi said: “My autonomy was violated; my photographs were splashed all over the news; my actions were pronounced guilty - not in the court of law, but on flat screens by seekers of TRPs. I sat there, unaware of the many abstractions made of me in order to satiate their idea of me.”

Ravi, whose arrest triggered widespread outrage, added that it wasn’t a crime to draw attention to the climate crisis. “At the end of the five days I was shifted to Judicial Custody for 3 days, I wondered when it became a crime to think the most basic elements of sustenance on this planet were as much mine as theirs,” she wrote.

She thanked all the people who supported her and added that there were many others who continued to languish between bars without the legal assistance that she had.

“Although their physical forms are trapped behind bars because of our collective silence, their ideas continue to live on as will the united resistance of the people. Ideas do not die. And, truth, no matter how long it takes, always reveals itself.”