Researcher Rona Wilson and activist Sudhir Dhawale, accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, were released on bail from a Navi Mumbai prison on Friday, more than six years after they were arrested. The duo walked out of the Taloja jail after completing bail formalities before the special NIA court, over a fortnight after they were granted bail by the Bombay High Court. The HC granted bail to Wilson and Dhawale on January 8, noting they had been in jail since 2018 and the trial in the case, in which anti-terror act UAPA has been invoked, was yet to start. Apart from Dhawale and Wilson, 14 other activists and academicians were arrested in the case. Eight of them have been granted bail till now, with one, Mahesh Raut, still in jail as the appeal filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against his bail is pending before the Supreme Court. Jesuit priest and activist Stan Swamy, one of the accused, died in 2021 while lodged in judicial custody. The case pertains to provocative speeches allegedly delivered at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, triggering violence at Koregaon-Bhima, a village outside Pune city, the next day. The Pune police had claimed the conclave was backed by Maoists. The NIA later took over the probe.
The accused were initially placed under house arrest in August last year by the Pune Police in Maharashtra and were later taken into custody on October 26, after a sessions court in Pune rejected their bail pleas.
ACP Shivaji Pawar has been asked to file his affidavit by August 15.
Maharashtra police on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for suspected Maoist links. Near simultaneous searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi. Subsequently, Rao, Bhardwaj and Farreira were arrested. Although Navalakha was also arrested, the Delhi high court ordered police not to take him out of the national capital at least until Wednesday. According to unconfirmed reports, others whose residences were raided are Susan Abraham, Kranthi Tekula, Father Stan Swamy in Ranchi and Anand Teltumbde in Goa. The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year. Here are their brief profiles:
None of them had anything to do with the violence at Bhima Koregaon, where they were not even present, points out Aakar Patel.
The court asked the Maharashtra police to file their case diary pertaining to the ongoing investigation in the case by September 24.
Maharashtra Police had on August 28 raided the homes of the prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for their alleged Maoist links, sparking a chorus of outrage from human rights defenders.
The bench, which also comprised Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, told the Maharashtra government to make its police officials "more responsible" on matters pending before the court.
'If we accept this, then in a few years we will not see a democratic India that we know'
The law permits a person to approach the police or a magistrate to lodge a complaint and get their grievances addressed, the court noted.
Varavara Rao reached home in Hyderabad on Thursday morning, while activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, were sent to Mumbai by road.
Teltumbde later termed the police's case against him and several other social activists as 'harassment' and a ploy to 'humiliate' them.
Do Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray, Sanjay Raut, and Sharad Pawar want the deaths of the Bhima Koregaon accused to be associated with their regime? asks Jyoti Punwani.
The court was hearing the plea filed against the arrest of the rights activists -- Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha -- in the case.
Minal Gadling, in her petition, claimed that all the arrested five, including her husband, have been in a false and mala fide way implicated in the case even when there was no involvement on their part in any such activity.
A police official said the five arrested are suspected to have Maoist links and had allegedly funded the Elgar Parishad conclave.
On the last date of hearing, the Maharashtra police had produced additional letters to establish Moist links of the arrested accused even as the petitioners described it as cooked-up evidence.
The apex court also rejected the plea to appoint a Special Investigation Team for probe.
The judge said 'such books' and CDs prima facie indicated they contained some material against the state.
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Yug Chaudhary, counsel for co-accused Sudha Bahrdwaj, then told the court that the War and Peace that the court had referred to on Wednesday was a collection of essays edited by one Biswajit Roy, and was titled War and Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's carping ally said the police assertion about security threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Maoists was just a 'conspiracy theory'.
The Delhi high court freed Navlakha from house arrest on Monday, five weeks after he and four other rights activists were arrested in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence in Maharashtra.
'By transferring the case to the NIA without the Maharashtra government's consent clearly indicates they want to play mischief.'
The Delhi high said that the trial court order was unsustainable in law.
"Every criminal investigation is based on allegations and we have to see whether there is some material," the court said.
The apex court questioning the police about the arrests said that 'dissent is the safety valve of democracy and if you don't allow these safety valves, it will burst.'
Pune police on Tuesday raided homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them -- poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and Chhattisgarh and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in Delhi.
The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year.
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'This is how Narendra Modi-Amit Shah rule. They are now announcing that these arrested Naxalites want to kill Modi.'
'They have realised that class war is not possible in India, so they are trying to bring about a caste war.'
