Human rights lawyer sends legal notice to Arnab Goswami over ‘fake news’

Sudha Bharadwaj has fought against various fake encounters of Adivasis in the Chhattisgarh high court and made representations to the National Human Rights Commission on behalf of many activists. She sent a legal notice to Republic TV and Arnab Goswami for spreading “false, malicious and defamatory allegations,” against her in their TV show.

Sudha Bharadwaj
 
New Delhi: Human rights lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj has sent a legal notice to Republic TV and Arnab Goswami for spreading “false, malicious and defamatory allegations,” against her in their TV show which aired on July 4.
 
Republic TV in its show said that “First it was a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Modi and now comes another set of explosive letters that expose the urban Naxals. Republic TV has accessed a letter written by Comrade (advocate) Sudha Bhardwaj to one comrade Prakash. Based in Raipur Comrade Sudha Bhardwaj is a representative of multiple organisations —  Jagdalpur Legal Aid and Bastar Solidarity Network.”
 
Sudha Bharadwaj has fought against various fake encounters of Adivasis in the Chhattisgarh high court and made representations to the National Human Rights Commission on behalf of many activists. She is a visiting professor at National Law University, Delhi and national secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. As part of her work as a trade unionist, she became a lawyer in the year 2000 since then she has fought scores of cases of workers, farmers, Adivasis and poor people in the field of labour, land acquisition, forest rights and environmental rights.
 
“In my opinion, the present malicious, motivated and fabricated attack on me is because I recently addressed a press conference in Delhi to condemn the arrest on 6 June of Advocate Surendra Gadling. The Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL), an organisation of lawyers has also strongly taken up the issue of other lawyers such as Advocate Chandrashekhar of Bhim Army and Advocate Vachinathan arrested after the Sterlite firing. It is clear that in targeting such lawyers, the state is trying to silence those who stand for the democratic rights of citizens. The state strategy is to create a chilling effect and deny equitable access to the legal system. Also, very recently, the IAPL had organised a fact-finding into the difficulties faced by lawyers in Kashmir,” she said in a press release condemning Goswami’s allegations.
 
She has denied all the allegations made against her. “I firmly and categorically deny that the letter referred to by Goswami – if at all such a document exists – has ever been written by me. I firmly refute all the allegations that the Republic TV has made against me, defaming me, causing me professional and personal injury. In its programme, the Republic TV has not revealed the source of such a letter. I find it curious that a document purporting to contain evidence of such serious crimes should first surface in the studio of Arnab Goswami,” she said in the letter.
 
She was accused of “having received money from Maoists, confirmed that various advocates, some of whom she knows as excellent human rights lawyers and others she doesn’t know at all, had some sort of Maoist link.”
 
“Since the year 2007, I am practising in the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur and was nominated by the High Court to be a member of the Chhattisgarh State Legal Services Authority. My pro-people positions and work as a human rights lawyer are a matter of public record. I am perfectly aware that they stand in direct opposition to the views so loudly and frequently expressed by Arnab Goswami and Republic TV,” she added.
 
“In all these cases I have acted with the professional integrity and courage expected of a human rights lawyer. This indeed appears to be “my crime” which has earned me the super exclusive attentions of Arnab Goswami,” she said.
 

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