JNUTA condemns raid conducted at DU prof Hany Babu's Noida house

The JNUTA on Wednesday condemned the raid conducted at the residence of Delhi University professor Hany Babu in Noida in connection with the 2017 Elgaar Parishad case for alleged Maoist links and called it an attempt "intended to intimidate and harass him".

Pune Police on Tuesday searched 45-year-old Babu's house in Sector 78 of Noida, adjoining the national capital. Pune Assistant Commissioner of Police Shivaji Pawar said no arrest was made during the search operation.

The search conducted at his residence is another "shocking episode in the ongoing authoritarian attempts by the current regime to intimidate and silence activists, writers, professors, journalists, and human rights defenders across the country", the JNUTA said.

"This raid on him also foregrounds the heights that police paranoia about critique and dissent has scaled so much so that reading and writing are now seen to be suspicious activities," they said.

The JNUTA claimed that police spent an inordinate amount of time going through Babu's book collection, ultimately settling on confiscating two books that are freely available in the public domain, and not on any list of banned publications.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) sees this one act as embodying a message being sent out to all academics -- "If you read (or write) about what a ruling dispensation determines to be impermissible, expect the state to come calling."
"He is a highly respected academic scholar, and has been a strong voice for academic