Several legal professionals, writers, artists, journalists, and teachers have issued a joint announcement condemning the registration of FIR with the aid of CBI towards the NGO Lawyers Collective and its founder Senior Advocate Anand Grover, for alleged violations of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act.

“The registration of an FIR in opposition to them underneath the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Indian Penal Code, on the very allegations which can be already challenged before the High Court of Bombay, is a clear signal of government waste and overreach. Pillorying them this way might deprive inclined sections of society of the advantage of representing such excessive caliber and commitment. We do not desire to look at a destiny wherein the voices of people consisting of Indira Jaising and Anand Grover are curtailed, and the attempt of the State to accomplish that must be strongly criticized”, stated the statement titled ‘Standing up for people who stood with us.’

They have known the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the housing ministry to “desist from the unjustified and vindictive use of crook law” against its founders, Indira Jaising and Anand Grover.
The signatories consist of men and women, including Anand Patwardhan, documentary maker; Anup Surendranath, Law Professor; Javed Akhtar, artist-lyricist; Naseeruddin Shah & Ratna Pathak Shah; actors; Teesta Setalvad, social activist and Senior Advocates Rajani Iyer, Gayatri Singh, and Sanjay Singhvi, and lawyers which include Karuna Nundy, Veena Gowda, and Trideep Pais and so forth.

They said, “The work of Lawyer’s Collective in preferred and Indira Jaising and Anand Grover, especially, has contributed to converting the lives not simply of people but residents of a democratic republic. They have not best represented the rights of people and groups, including slum dwellers, employees, exchange unions, prisoners, SC/ST associations, Bhopal Gas tragedy sufferers, ladies, LGBTQ+, and different marginalized groups as lawyers. Still, They have contributed immensely to the discourse of human rights and kingdom accountability as public highbrow”.

Lawyers Collective had expressed “surprise and outrage” at the CBI motion. In the declaration, it stated that it has “reasons to agree with that its workplace bearers are for my part being targeted for speaking up in defense of human rights, secularism, and independence of the judiciary” and to “silence them as they’ve taken up sensitive instances within the beyond.”
Last week, the National Human Rights Commission had known for a record from the CBI regarding the case after noting that the FIR turned into registered nearly three years after MHA filed a document against the employer. Based on the timing of the FIR, the Commission, headed by former CJI Justice H L Dattu, discovered that it had to look at the difficulty to “make it non-discriminatory and avoid arbitrariness.”