A group of 53 people from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, including faculty, staff and students, have expressed solidarity with Professor Anand Teltumbde, a senior professor at Goa Institute of Management, who has been booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act by Pune Police in connection with the alleged Koregaon Bhima violence conspiracy.
The statement comes close on the heels of a similar statement decrying “the injustice being meted out to one of IIM system’s illustrious alumni, Prof. Anand Teltumbde, under false charges” issued last week by 23 faculty members at IIM Ahmedabad.
The police have claimed that Teltumbde was part of the Elgaar Parishad rally of Dalits organised at Koregaon Bhima in December 2017 by Left activists following which violence erupted, resulting in the death of one person. The police have claimed to have found links between Teltumbde and left-wing extremists.
A petition filed by Teltumbde for quashing of the FIR, filed against him last year by Pune Police, was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.
“As faculty members, we are proud not only of Prof Teltumbde’s achievements in the corporate world but also of the extremely rich scholarship he has produced on a diverse range of topics, including the Constitution of India. We are alarmed that a public intellectual who has made selfless contributions to the nation through his scholarship, can be under the threat of imprisonment on the basis of extremely questionable and prima facie motivated evidence,” says the solidarity statement released by the group.
Teltumbde has been a visiting faculty at IIM-A, an IIT-KGP professor, executive director of BPCL, ex-MD and CEO of Petronet India, senior professor and chair, Big Data Analytics, an author of 26 books and scholar of caste-class and public policy issues.
