Respected Prime Minister Narendra Modi 

Respected Minister for social justice and empowerment 

Respected Minister for human resources development 

Government of India 

Sir/Madam 

Professor Dr Anand is a IIM-A alumnus, IIT Professor, Executive Director of BPCL, Ex-MD & CEO of Petronet India, Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics in GIM, author of 26 books, columnist in EPW, writer of innumerable articles, a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, Leading Public Intellectual and Democratic and Educational Rights Activist. Now he is facing imminent threat of arrest as an ‘Urban Maoist’

The appeal for quashing the false FIR against Dr Anand,  filed by the Pune Police was rejected on 14 January by the Supreme Court and gave four weeks to seek pre-arrest bail from the competent court. Until now Anand felt confident that whatever charges the Police levied could be proved as criminal fabrication once they landed before the court. 

The arrest under the UAPA can mean years of incarceration. Even a hardened criminal can get away with his crime with a metered punishment of a year or two but an innocent person merely for the police, invariably acting at the behest of political bosses, claim that they have evidence against him could keep for years in jail. The arrest for him is not simply the hardship of prison life, it is keeping away from laptop which has been integral with his body, from his library which has been part of his life, half-written manuscripts of books committed to various publishers, his research papers which are in various stages of completion, his students who staked their future on his professional reputation, his institute that invested so much resources in his name and recently took him on its Board of Governors, and his numerous friends and of course his family—his wife, who, as the granddaughter of Babasaheb Ambedkar hardly bargained for this fate and daughters who are already disturbed not knowing whatever that has been happening to him since August last year. 

Coming from the poorest of the poor family,  Anand passed through the best institutes in the country with scholastic achievements. Just being an alumnus of hallowed IIM Ahmedabad, Anand could easily live a luxurious life only if he had chosen to ignore social oddities around. However, with a sense of contributing to better the lives of people, he decided to just make enough to sustain his family at a reasonable living standard and devote time to make intellectual contribution, the only thing possible, towards making the world a little more just. Informed by this instinct, the residue of activism during the school and college days naturally landed Anand in organizations like Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) of which he is today the General Secretary and All India Forum for Right to education (AIFRTE) of which he is a presidium member. There is not an iota of unlawful in either his voluminous writings or selfless activism. Rather, his entire academic career and corporate career of nearly four decades has been without a single blemish and exemplar of integrity of highest degree.

Kindly intervene and ensure that the justice will prevail and the false FIR against Dr Anand is quashed and ensure that he continues his teaching, writing and activism without any hurdles, by granting him pre arrest bail.