(Geneva, 16 July 2019)

While country representatives were discussing human rights mainstreaming at the 41st session of the Human Rights Council, we learned that our colleague and fellow Global Commission member, Anand Grover, has seen his homes raided by India’s Central Bureau of Investigations. Anand, one of the most prominent human rights figures in India and globally, is being harassed for over three years now in relation to alleged funding irregularities for Lawyers Collective –a non-governmental organization he co-founded with his partner and acclaimed human rights defender and Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaising–, reaching its epitome with the raids of last week.

Anand Grover has been a tireless and outspoken advocate for health, rights and dignity for all, and has not shied away from addressing wrong policies. As a Supreme Court advocate and lawyer, Anand has spent the last thirty-nine years binding by due process, using litigation to advance rights, and defending the rule of law in different parts of India and the world. We hope these principles of an independent and democratic judiciary, that he bounded himself with, will be applied to him in the current investigation.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy stands by its member Anand Grover, and requests the authorities in India to cease the harassment of Lawyers Collective, Indira Jaising and Anand Grover; to respect judicial due process and wait for the result of the appeal of the 2016 report by the Ministry of Home Affairs against Lawyers Collective; and most of all to stop immediately the growing and worrying trend of attacks on civil society and its long fought and necessary freedom.

Signed,

Members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy

To download the press release, please click here.