Arundhati Roy is being hounded by the Indian state. This is a test case for its democracy | Meena Kandasamy

That the author could be prosecuted for comments made 13 years ago is absurd - but also a deadly threat to freedom of speech

The climate for media and free speech in India is in a dangerous place. The country is already ranked 161 out of 180 countries in the press freedom index, but the actions of prime minister Narendra Modi's government in the past few weeks have shown how many more clampdowns await. Desperately in need of distraction tactics - given the many failures in governance, tackling inflation or delivering jobs - the regime is after a fresh dose of sound and fury against political opponents.

And so a decade-old case has been dusted off, paving the way for initiating legal proceedings against the novelist, journalist and activist Arundhati Roy for comments she made in 2010 about Kashmir. The Kashmiri law professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain has also had charges against him approved. It comes after police raids on the homes of more than 40 journalists in Delhi and elsewhere. They have been slapped with terrorism charges and had their phones and laptops seized. They were working for NewsClick, a website accused of having funding links with China: a charge denied by both the website and its funders.