Mumbai: The nine arrested accused in the Elgar Parishad case – Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj - were produced before a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Friday. This is the first time that they have been produced in court after the case was transferred to a Mumbai court from Pune.
The case pertains to alleged inflammatory speeches by activists on December 31, 2017, which led to violence in the village of Bhima-Koregaon near Pune on January 1, 2018.
The agency informed the court there were some pending pleas by the accused, from the Pune court where the case was being heard until it had been transferred to the city court. One of the pleas is by Arun Ferreira and Surendra Gadling, seeking copies of hard disks seized from them by Pune Police and another, challenging their judicial custody under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The court said it would hear the pleas on March 13, the day on which the accused could be produced through video-conference.
Three of the accused – Ferreira, Gadling and Gonsalves, said they would be appearing in person, being lawyers by profession and defend themselves.
Ferreira informed court that after they were shifted to Arthur Road Jail from Pune, the jail authorities had told them that they could not keep the chargesheets – running into 10,000 to 15,000 pages - and books with them, due to space constraints. He requested the court to pass an order to let them keep the material. Special NIA Judge DE Kothalikar said they would be shifted to Taloja Jail.
The accused were all arrested between June and August 2018 and had been lodged in Yerawada Jail, Pune. On Wednesday, they were shifted from the Pune jail to Mumbai — the seven men were sent to Arthur Road Jail while the two women were sent to Byculla Jail, following the transfer of the case to a Mumbai court. This January, the NIA had moved a plea in the Pune court hearing the Elgar Parishad case, seeking to transfer the case to the special NIA court in Mumbai after the Centre had transferred the probe of the case from Pune Police to the NIA.
Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha are yet to be arrested for allegedly giving provocative speeches during Elgar Parishad in December 2017 and for their connections to the banned CPI (Maoist), raising funds for the terror outfit and planning the assassination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
