Climate activist Disha Ravi on Saturday said that she was unable to join the United Nations COP26 summit in Scotland’s Glasgow city as the government did not give her a passport despite applying for it 88 days ago.
In an opinion article for British online newspaper The Independent, Ravi noted that one of the conditions of her bail, in the farm protest document case, did not allow her to leave the country.
On February 23, Ravi was released from Tihar Jail. This came 10 days after she was arrested in a case filed by the Delhi Police. She was accused of being the editor of an online document, referred to as a “toolkit”, intended to help amplify farmer protests against Centre’s three contentious agricultural laws.
The “toolkit” – a common term used by social activists for campaign material – was tweeted by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
In the article published in The Independent on Saturday, Ravi wrote that being released on bail in India meant that the person was “only partly free”. “Your case is a scarlet letter that no one can miss, the First Information Report number walks with you in all aspects of your life and it prevented me from going to Cop26 in Glasgow,” she said.
Ravi said that she had applied for her passport based on a Ministry of External Affairs order. “Two court hearings, 60 days, two police visits, and two passport office visits for a passport that is not here yet,” she wrote.
The climate activist said that civil liberties are denied if a citizen is incarcerated in India.
Ravi also said that the Bengaluru Police refused to deliver her passport and instead criticised her mother for “raising a rebel”. She claimed that a police officer compared her to fugitive billionaire Vijay Mallya.
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