Disha Ravi, the 21-year-old climate activist and granddaughter of a farmer, is the new target in “New India.” She has been booked on charges of “sedition,” “intent to provoke rioting,” and “for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, place of birth, race and language and criminal conspiracy.”
It is alleged that she distributed a “tool kit to tarnish India’s image” in the form of a Google Document, which contained points that amplify the voice of “anti-India forces” and show support for protesting farmers against the three new farm bills passed in 2020.
The accusation is certainly controversial. But the draconian manner in which the Delhi police arrested her from her residence in Bengaluru is disconcerting; critics and lawyers have also questioned the magistrate’s decision to place her under police custody for five days.
Soon after the state’s aggressive intimidation, trolls cell unleashed a nationwide Twitter attack on her. Using bold fonts, altered personal images and vicious hashtags, trolls unleashed a social media smear campaign. They targeted her with a vengeance, using religion as the basis. As KM Rakesh writes in The Telegraph:
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