In a significant development, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday told the Bombay High Court, it won't file any reply to the petition filed by Surendra Gadling, who has challenged the transfer of the probe in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case from state police to the National Investigations Agency (NIA).
The bench of Justices Sambhaji Shinde and Nijamoodin Jamadar was hearing a plea filed by Gadling, one of the prime accused in the case, challenging the transfer of probe to the NIA in January 2020.
Public Prosecutor Aruna Pai for the state told the bench that since NIA is the prosecuting agency now, it should file the reply.
"I have informed the court that the state of Maharashtra won't be filing any say in the matter since now NIA is prosecuting the case," Pai told FPJ.
Accordingly, the bench has adjourned the case for hearing final arguments till September 27.
Notably, Gadling and other accused Sudhir Dhawale in the case have questioned the decision of the Union government to "suddenly" transfer the case from Pune Police to the NIA. They have stated that there were no compelling grounds to transfer of the case to the NIA, two years after the FIR was filed by the Pune Police.
In their plea, the accused have pointed out that there weren't any provision which allowed the Union government to transfer the probe even after the investigations are completed. They alleged malafide behind the decision to transfer the probe and that it was done for settling political scores with the ruling coalition of Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP.
In response to this plea, the NIA had said that this petition was only to "thwart" the probe.
