NEW DELHI: An echo of the anger being expressed on the Internet over the "arrest of ideas" in different parts of the country — reflected recently by the detention of a publisher for selling books on Bhagat Singh, Marx and Lenin, and stoppage of a play dealing with the Mumbai mills — will be heard at the India Social Forum (ISF), beginning in the capital next week.

This was decided at a gathering of activists who have been agitated for the past fortnight over the detention of Delhi-based publisher Sunita Narayan and confiscation of books from her stall at the Chandrapur Book Fair in Maharashtra on October 15.

Narrating what happened to her in Chandrapur in Maharashtra, she said the police confiscated books authored by Clara Zetkin, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, Baburam Bhattarai, Li Onesto, Anand Swarup Verma and Vaskar Nandy, though not one of the texts seized was proscribed or declared offensive by any State agency.

According to Ms. Narayan, the police insisted that she was Sunita, the widow of a slain naxalite from Jehanabad, and refused to accept her word that her husband was alive and that she was a native of Bhagalpur. "When I insisted that they were mistaking me for someone else, the police said that they would prove that I was Sunita from Jehanabad."

The police have registered a case against her under Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

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