Attempts will be made to derail everything: Arundhati (Lead)

New Delhi : Claiming that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were fast losing popularity, writer-activist Arundhati Roy on Thursday said that attempts will be made to "derail everything with some surprise attack" ahead of the 2019 general elections.

"There will be ruthless and continuous attempts to divert attention from the reasons for this loss of popularity, and to fracture the growing solidarity of the opposition. It will be a continuous circus from now on till the elections -- arrests, lynchings, bomb attacks, false flag attacks, riots," she said at a press conference here.

Roy along with rights activist Aruna Roy and lawyer Prashant Bhushan and others held a press conference at the Press Club here to express their views on the arrest of rights activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Fereira and P. Varavara Rao on Tuesday, which had triggered a massive outcry.

She alleged that small businesses, traders and the poor had suffered enormously while companies close to the BJP had multiplied their wealth several times over since the NDA government came to power in 2014.

"Businessmen like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have been allowed to decamp with thousands of crores of public money while the government looked the other way. What kind of accountability can we expect for all this? Zero," Roy said.

The writer said the Tuesday arrest of rights activists is "illegal".

"The arrest of these people serves to cut whole populations of vulnerable people off from any hope of justice or representation. Because these persons were their representatives. They remain in custody, charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Fortunately, they are still alive, unlike Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi.

"The vulnerable people are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated. God help us get our country back," she said.