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 Bombay high court on Friday granted bail to scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
The accused persons held training camps at various regions to recruit cadres at all levels for commission of terrorist activities of the CPI (Maoist), the anti-terror agency said.
On January 1 in 2018, violence erupted at an event to mark 100 years of the Bhima-Koregaon battle, leaving one dead and several injured, including 10 policemen.
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 letters were reportedly recovered after the anti-Naxal operations in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli, in which 39 Maoists were killed, in April.
A police official said the five arrested are suspected to have Maoist links and had allegedly funded the Elgar Parishad conclave.
The draft lays down 17 charges against 15 accused, including human rights and civil liberties activists, and they have been sought to be charged under various sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
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.
The residence of Geelani has been converted into an unofficial jail. No one is allowed to enter or leave the premises.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to interfere in the arrest of five rights activists in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence case and declined to appoint a SIT for probe into their arrest.
They also demanded action against officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is conducting a probe into the Elgar Parishad case, and former superintendent of the Taloja jail.
'We urge you to take remedial measures to address this blatant injustice pending withdrawal of the case against them,' the MPs write.
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.
Bhima Koregaon represents what the government can do in India against well meaning people who speak up against atrocities, who stand up for the weak and the dispossessed and for this reason alone as seen as enemies of the State and kept in prison for as long as the government can manage. So long as the rest of us do not speak up against this misbehaviour by the State, so long as we forget about those who have been made its victims, this behaviour will continue, asserts Aakar Patel.
The prosecution, while opposing the bail applications, had argued that they have "corrborative evidence" against the accused to prove their involvement in Maoist activities, such as mobilising cadres, recruiting students from eminent institutes and sending them to the interior to become "professional revolutionaries", raise funds and procure weapons.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday that the Bharatiya Janata Party's attempt to form a government with his nephew and Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar had one benefit, as it ended President's rule in Maharashtra in 2019.
Teltumbde later termed the police's case against him and several other social activists as 'harassment' and a ploy to 'humiliate' them.
Fadnavis said the decision of the top court proved that there was no conspiracy behind action by the state police against Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha.
ACP Shivaji Pawar has been asked to file his affidavit by August 15.
'If we accept this, then in a few years we will not see a democratic India that we know'
'I was under the illusion that this could never happen to me because my background was such -- corporate CEO, IIT professor, IIT alumnus, IIM...'
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:
Hany Babu Musaliyarveettil Tharayil, 54, a resident of Gautam Buddha Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, is an associate professor in the Department of English
The larger conspiracy of Communist Party of India-Maoists was to overthrow the democratic system in the country, and the accused were working in that direction, the chargesheet claimed.
District and Sessions Judge K D Vadane sent the two activists to police custody after district government pleader and public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar argued in the court that since all the accused were under house arrest as per the Supreme Court's directions, they could not be interrogated in connection with the case.
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 judge said 'such books' and CDs prima facie indicated they contained some material against the state.
He took up the causes of tribals marginalised after their lands has been taken over for dams, mines and townships, often without their consent.
The letter was seized during nationwide raids conducted by the Pune police in connection with the case following which these activists were arrested, he said.
'The BJP's modus operandi is not just to be intolerant of dissent, it is to create mistrust and doubt between communities and the electoral process itself.'
None of them had anything to do with the violence at Bhima Koregaon, where they were not even present, points out Aakar Patel.
"Every criminal investigation is based on allegations and we have to see whether there is some material," the court said.
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.
Recently, the Bombay high court had set aside the lower court's order allowing extension of time to police to file its probe report against the rights activists in the violence case.
'These charges of the prosecution will fall to the ground and I am 100 per cent sure of that.'
'If you persist in opposing the government, they set the ED or the NIA on you. And the courts have not given us much hope.'
'Father Stan was concerned about other innocents who may be implicated and put inside without the slightest proof, the way he was.'
Talking to reporters in Kolhapur, Pawar said it was not right on the part of the Centre to hand over the probe into the case, which was with the Pune police, to the NIA as law and order was a state subject. NCP leader and Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said Uddhav Thackeray had overruled him on the probe in the case.
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