India's highest court today found award-winning novelist Arundhati Roy guilty of contempt of court over a campaign to halt the building of a controversial dam and sentenced her to one day in jail.
"We have no doubt that she has committed criminal contempt," the two-member Supreme Court bench, Justices G.B. Pattanaik and Justice RP Seti, said in their ruling. "We are not impressed by her arguments."
Roy, a passionate campaigner against the billion-dollar dam, said she had come prepared for the verdict. "I have my backpack," she said as she was escorted out of the court by officials for arrangements to be made for her to be sent to jail.
The charge stemmed from an affidavit filed by the Booker Prize-winning author against a contempt-of-court case filed by five lawyers against her last year following a protest over construction of the dam on the Narmada River in western India.
The Supreme Court dismissed that contempt case but it said the affidavit filed by Roy in response to the proceedings amounted to contempt of court. Roy also was also given a 2,000 rupees (€45) fine.
Roy won Britain's Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel The God of Small Things.