Many activists on Saturday tweeted appeals for the release of human rights activist Umar Khalid, marking 300 days of his arrest on the charge of inciting riots through his protests last year against the new citizenship regime.
The Twitter storm with the hashtag #UmarKoRihaKaro comes against the backdrop of Monday’s custody death of Father Stan Swamy, a priest jailed in connection with an alleged Maoist plot, whom activists consider a “prisoner of conscience” like Umar.
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A cultural event was conducted on Facebook in solidarity with jailed activists and in memory of Fr Stan, at which theatre personalities Danish Hussain and Quasar Thakore Padamsee, singer Moushumi Bhowmik and actor Suhaas Ahuja performed. Poet Nabiya Khan recited a new poem titled You are the Revolution on Umar and other “political prisoners”.