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The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in Bengaluru has demanded that the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) cancel a planned screening of Lalit Vachani’s documentary on imprisoned activist Umar Khalid, Prisoner No. 626710 is Present, on campus.
The documentary screening is scheduled to be held on September 14 by the Law & Society Committee (Law Soc), a students organisation at NLSIU. It is being organised in solidarity with Umar Khalid, marking six years since his imprisonment without trial under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots.
The screening is part of a series of solidarity screenings and gatherings being organised across the country. It is scheduled on the occasion of Political Prisoners’ Day, observed in India on September 13, and coinciding with the date of Umar Khalid’s arrest in 2020.
A former student leader at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Umar Khalid was arrested in connection with the Delhi riots case and has been in custody since September 2020. He has been charged under the UAPA and other provisions of law, and is yet to face trial.
In a press statement, ABVP Bengaluru secretary Abhinandan Mirji said the RSS-backed student outfit “strongly condemns the proposed campus screening.”
Mirji said ABVP had also emailed a formal complaint to the NLSIU administration demanding that the event be stopped, but had received no response so far. “ABVP emphasises that academic campuses must remain dedicated to national integrity and learning, rather than serving as platforms for political propaganda or glorifying civil unrest,” the statement said.
Girish Bharadwaj, an advocate and RSS swayamsevak, has also written to the NLSIU Vice-Chancellor asking to cancel the screening.
The demand at NLSIU comes weeks after the administration of JNU in Delhi revoked permission for the venue where a discussion on Umar Khalid’s book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, was scheduled to be held in August. The book is a version of Umar Khalid’s PhD thesis, which he completed as a research scholar at JNU.
A day before the scheduled event, JNU revoked the auditorium booking, claiming “non-disclosure of the full facts about the program” as the reason. ABVP had claimed credit for the cancellation of the venue.
The discussion was subsequently held at a different venue on the JNU campus, amid disruption by ABVP members.
