Why 21-year-old activist Disha Ravi from Bengaluru has been arrested, charged with sedition

Kolkata: A 21-year-old activist was arrested in Bengaluru by the Delhi Police Cyber Crime Cell Sunday in connection with the ‘toolkit’ shared by teenaged Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on the ongoing farmer protests in India.

Disha Ravi, a BBA student from a private college in Bengaluru, is one of the founding members of Fridays For Future India (FFF), which is part of the global climate strike movement Thunberg started in August 2018.

The daughter of a Mysuru-based athletics trainer, she was working as a ‘culinary experience manager’ with a Bengaluru-based company, Good Mylk, and was arrested Saturday evening from her residence in Abbigere and taken to the capital to be produced in front of a magistrate.

he allegations against her

According to senior Bengaluru Police officials, on 4 February, the Delhi Police Cyber Crime Cell registered an FIR against the creators of the ‘toolkit’, with the preliminary investigation claiming that the toolkit was devised by “pro-Khalistani” organisation Poetic Justice Foundation.

A senior police official told ThePrint that the operation involved tracking her social media handles, in which she was found violating the law by disseminating the ‘toolkit’. She has been booked on charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy and spreading hatred.

Another senior official elaborated that the sequence of events during the farmer protests, including the tractor rally on 26 January leading to violence in Delhi, was traced to be a “copycat” of the alleged action plan shared in the toolkit.

“We have not found any previous record of Disha being part of any physical protests. She was not on the police radar until this arrest. We assisted the Delhi Police in tracking her as is the formality,” said Bengaluru’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (North Division) Dharmendra Kumar Meena.