Fellow writer Vikram Seth has taken up cudgels on her behalf and is making it a point to openly garner support for Roy, who is facing contempt of court charges in the Supreme Court. On March 6, the Supreme Court will deliver its judgement, the maximum sentence for which is six months imprisonment.

"It is the writers and the people from the press who can stand up for the rights of the people and prevent executive excess," he said during the writers' retreat at Neemrana on Thursday. Seth had also brought up this issue during a panel discussion on the first day of the festival.

"It would be a great pity if there was no balance in the use of power by either the writers or the court. After all, they are natural allies," he said. Though saying that the matter was still sub judice and he couldn't speak about it directly, Seth continued to lash out against the "danda or law of the land" that was being perceived to bear against someone unjustly.

He too had put in his name, he said, after the Babri Masjid incident. "And it would be a terrible pity if we were to feel muzzled," the writer said. "Activists or not, if we were to look over our shoulder every time we wrote, it would be a thousand pities. It would be a thousand pities if people mistrusted the courts because it were perceived to be unjustly crushing the other possible champions of the people," he said.

Khushwant Singh too brought up the issue of people's rights. "Shashi Deshpande talked of Arundhati getting involved in the Narmada movement. In some way, we are all involved in this resurgence of fundamentalism and intolerance in the country," he said. Writers owed it to their pen and to themselves to be true to their conscience, he said.

Incidentally, Roy, though invited, did not attend the retreat at Neemrana.