Javed Anand, who along with his wife Teesta Setalvad faces arrest by the Gujarat police for alleged embezzlement of funds, clarifies his stand in an exclusive interview.The mud-slinging apart, this is an attempt to cripple us financially. For the past eight months, our accounts have been frozen and we have been struggling to pay our staff, said Javed Anand, who along with his wife Teesta Setalvad, faces arrest by the Gujarat police in a case of alleged embezzlement of funds. “We expected this from the day we started work in Gujarat in 2002. We had no illusions about what we were up against. The NDA was in power, and Narendra Modi was CM in Gujarat. The nature of our work is such that in 2004, the Supreme Court directed that Teesta be given security by the CISF.”The Supreme Court has stayed the arrest of the couple till February 19. On Thursday, the Gujarat High Court had rejected their anticipatory bail application, saying their custodial interrogation was in public interest. But pointed out Javed, everything related to the case was documented and in the Gujarat police’s possession. “They have our bank statements, the bank statements of our trusts, resolutions of trustees, our IT returns. We have also given them details of cash expenditure which run into thousands of pages. All they need to do is study them and see if their allegations have any basis. We can’t tamper with those documents. So what do they want from our custodial interrogation?”Had the repeated references in the media to their lifestyle—alleged by the Gujarat government to have been sustained by funds collected for Gujarat riot victims—created any mistrust among the victims they worked with? “Not at all,” replied Javed. “In fact, the day our application was rejected by the Gujarat High Court, our lawyers called to say that many of the survivors had called them to express their support.”“The fact that we’ve survived since our bank accounts were frozen is because of concerned citizens supporting us,” added Javed, “not only those we approached but also complete strangers who said they believed in our work.”Defending their choice of a prominent Congressman as their lawyer in the Supreme Court, Javed said that they had approached Kapil Sibal as a top lawyer, not as a Congressman. “He has appeared for us earlier too. Besides, Prashant Bhushan and Indira Jaising were present in court too for the case.” How could they afford Sibal? “Many senior lawyers have appeared for us, from Kamini Jaiswal, to Harish Salve to Anil Dewan. We’ve never been in a position to offer them a rupee, and they’ve never mentioned it.” In fact, said Javed, with their accounts frozen, they had not been able to pay their Gujarat lawyers either. “Yet, despite the propaganda against us, they have never spoken about withdrawing from the case.”Giving a detailed rebuttal of the charges against them, Javed pointed out that the complainant, Raees Khan, who was their employee from 2002 to 2007, had started making allegations against them only in 2010, when the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court to investigate the Gujarat riot cases started its work. Citing the case of Zahira Shaikh, witness in the Best Bakery Case, who had made similar charges against Teesta, Javed pointed out that the Supreme Court had found the charges baseless and sentenced Shaikh to a year’s imprisonment for perjury.All the lawyers they had spoken to have concluded that the case was “completely mala fide”, added Javed. “Thanks to our efforts, 117 people have been given life imprisonment for perpetrating the 2002 Gujarat mass killings, including Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani. Then there’s the Zakia Jafri petition which accuses Narendra Modi himself as chief minister at that time. Now that the CM has become PM, we know the attack is going to get even more deadly. But we are not going to pack up and go home.”