Frontlist | Disha Ravi arrested in Greta Thunberg toolkit case

A graduate from Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru, Disha is actively involved in environmental issues across India. She has appeared in media reports across the world, including ‘The Guardian’ and ‘Vogue’, for her campaigns. Her motivation to become a climate activist came from watching her grandparents, who are farmers and struggle with the effects of climate change, she told Auto Report Africa last year. The change in Bengaluru’s weather patterns affected her directly, she told ‘Vogue’. “In Bengaluru, we have been experiencing severe rainfall and flooding. My own house got flooded,” she had said. FFF shot into limelight in July 2020 when it campaigned against the Draft Environment Impact Assessment Notification, which led to the blocking of FFF India website and a UAPA case that was later revoked. The organisation is also involved in campaigns for the protection of Mollem forest area in Goa, an elephant conservation zone in Uttarakhand, Aarey forest in Mumbai, Raika forest in Jammu and Dumna nature park in Madhya Pradesh. Disha is an active participant in these causes. She also works as a culinary experience manager with GoodMylk, a company involved with making plant-based food accessible and affordable to people. Disha’s friends describe her as a familiar face at lake clean-ups and tree-planting drives in Bengaluru, and an animal lover fighting against the meat industry. Her friends say the arrest is to suppress voices of dissent. Why was Disha Ravi arrested? The climate activist was on Saturday from Bengaluru for allegedly sharing with Greta Thunberg the toolkit related to the farmer's protest against the Centre's three agri laws, Delhi Police said on Sunday. The Delhi Police claimed that Disha Ravi was an editor of the toolkit Google doc and key conspirator in the document's formulation and dissemination. Police alleged that Ravi and others collaborated with pro-Khalistani Poetic Justice Foundation to spread disaffection against the Indian State. She was the one who shared the toolkit doc with Greta Thunberg, the Delhi Police claimed in a tweet. Greta Thunberg, a teen climate activist, had shared the toolkit to lend her support to the farmers' agitation against the three farm reform laws. In the document, various urgent actions, including creating a Twitter storm and protesting outside Indian embassies, were listed which were needed to be taken to support the farmers' protest. The toolkit has been cited by some critics as proof of her conspiracy to fuel protests in India. Disha Ravi was produced before a Delhi court here on Sunday and remanded to police custody for five days. The police told the court that her custody was required to probe an alleged larger conspiracy against the Government of India and to ascertain her alleged role relating to the Khalistan movement.