Congress leader Pawan Khera also pointed out that Ali Khan Mahmudabad is the grandson of the late Jagat S Mehta, a Padma Bhushan awardee who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 1976 to 1979
NEW DELHI — Stressing that some BJP ministers have faced no action for “demeaning” the armed forces, the Congress on Monday termed the arrest of Ashoka University’s faculty Prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad as the ruling government’s “double standards”.
The Samajwadi Party also supported Prof Mahmudabad and criticised his arrest over his “thoughtful” post against violence in the wake of Operation Sindoor.
Congress leader Pawan Khera said when “writers, professors and critics are branded enemies, the real enemy is democracy itself.”
“His only mistake is that he wrote this post. His other mistake is his name,” Khera, the party’s media and publicity department head said, “This is the state of New India under the (Narendra) Modi government”.
The academic’s arrest came after two FIRs accused him of grave offences, including threatening the country’s sovereignty, over posts related to Operation Sindoor.
A historian and academic is jailed not for inciting violence but for advocating against it. His crime? Daring to speak truth to power, exposing the BJP’s cynical communal narrative, and calling out the hypocrisy of chest-thumping nationalism. Meanwhile, the BJP minister and their deputy CM face no action after openly demeaning the armed forces. No FIRs. No arrests. That’s the double standard of Modi’s governance.
“This is not about one man. It is about the slow suffocation of freedom of speech, the criminalisation of dissent, and the use of state machinery to silence intellectuals who challenge the BJP’s manufactured rage,” Khera said.
The Congress leader also pointed out that Ali Khan Mahmudabad is the grandson of the late Jagat S Mehta, a Padma Bhushan awardee who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 1976 to 1979, during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure as External Affairs Minister.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, too, has criticised Mahmudabad’s arrest. In a post, Akhilesh Yadav said, “Hukmaraanon kee badzubaanee par bhee aazaadee, aur kisee kee sach kahane par giraftaaree (Rough translation: Freedom even when rulers speak foul language, And arrest of someone for speaking the truth).”
