At a public hearing in Delhi’s Press Club on Monday, lawyers and prominent civil society activists countered the charges made against Teesta Setalvad and her husband, Javed Anand. As the Central Bureau of Investigation closes in on the couple, activists Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander said the “hounding” of Setalvad is meant to silence dissident voices. Roy called this moment a “test for democracy”.

Setalvad and Anand stand accused of a range of offences by the Gujarat Police and the CBI, from tutoring witnesses in the Gujarat riot cases to siphoning away funds meant for the Gulberg Society victims and violating the provisions of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act. Speaking through advocates Kamini Jaiswal and Ramesh Pukhrambam, Citizens for Peace and Justice and Sabrang Trust, both organisations associated with the couple, responded to the allegations.

Gulberg Society residents' complaint

In 2014, the Ahmedabad police registered an FIR in response to a complaint by former residents of Gulberg Society, who claimed that money collected in their name had not reached them. The Gujarat police reiterated the charges in its latest affidavit to the Supreme Court. Gulberg Society residents had claimed that crores of rupees were collected in local and foreign donations by the Sabrang Trust and the CJP but none of it saw the light of day.

Setalvad has responded that, since the Gulberg Society survivors would not get a fair price for their flats, Sabrang Trust would try raising funds to build a museum in memorial of the massacre. The CJP, she said, had nothing to do with the project.

“All the funds collected by the Sabrang Trust have been made to look like money for Gulberg Society,” said advocate Kamini Jaiswal. Setalvad’s contention is that only Rs 4.6 lakh had been raised for the communal violence museum so the project had to be abandoned. Not a single rupee of this amount had been touched, said Jaiswal. The trust funds had been audited and the information submitted to the relevant authorities.

The complaint was first made in 2013, the FIR was filed in 2014 and a year and a half later, a charge sheet is yet to be filed. Jaiswal said it proved that the police had no real evidence to make a case against Setalvad, the FIR was merely meant to intimidate.

The CBI closes in

In an FIR filed on July 7, the CBI charged Setalvad and Anand with receiving foreign funds which were ostensibly for CJP and Sabrang Trust but then illegally funnelled away for Sabrang Communications and Publishing Private Limited. The SCPPL is a non-profit organisation which publishes the magazine, Communalism Combat. This violated the provisions of the FCRA, according to the investigating agency.

First, both CJP and Sabrang Trust were registered under the FCRA, though SCPPL was not, Jaiswal said. But no funds for the trust or CJP had been transferred to SCPPL, though the organisations shared the same offices in Mumbai.

Second, Jaiswal contended, the SCPPL only had a “consultancy agreement” with Ford Foundation, which did not go against the provisions of the law. The FCRA forbids foreign donations to any “correspondent, columnist, cartoonist, editor, owner, printer or publisher of a registered newspaper”.

According to Setalvad, the consultancy fees received by SCPPL were towards a “clearly defined set of activities” that would “address the issues of caste and communalism”. These activities, moreover, had nothing to do with the magazine. The fees were not meant to remunerate Setalvad and Anand for their editorial or managerial duties.

While ordering a CBI probe into the matter, an official at the ministry of home affairs had said “Sabrang lobbied with the government in the public sphere to deepen and broaden the concept of minorities. It is stated that lobbying with a political party is not allowed under FCRA Act, 2010.”

Jaiswal pointed out the discrepancies in this statement. “Government” was not the same as “political party”. Moreover, the MHA seemed to mistake regular advocacy by NGOs and civil society on various issues for lobbying by interested parties, which is part of the political process in the United States.

The charges against Setalvad, said Jaiswal, were aimed at keeping her embroiled in defending her own cases so that she did not have the chance to help riot victims in cases that are coming up for hearings in various courts.