Elgaar Parishad case probe biased, imaginary: Defence lawyer to court

Elgaar Parishad case probe biased, imaginary: Defence lawyer to court

 

Police have claimed that a letter seized from an accused mentions an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a ‘Rajiv Gandhi type incident’.

A defence lawyer representing two of the arrested accused in the Elgaar Parishad case — Rona Wilson and P Varavara Rao — on Thursday termed the investigation in the case ‘biased’ and ‘imaginary’.

While seeking bail for Wilson and Rao, defence lawyer Rohan Nahar argued before a special court that the letters, emails and communications purportedly collected during the course of the investigation suffered from several legal shortcomings.

He said the addressor and addressee of these letters were unknown and the investigation officer had no evidence to connect them with the accused.

Nahar cited a letter that the prosecution claimed to have recovered from Wilson’s laptop. The letter, dated January 2, 2018, was allegedly addressed to ‘Comrade Rona’ by ‘Com.M’. It purportedly stated, “…Com. Manglu, Com. Deepu have been coordinating the Koregaon programme since last two months with Com. Sudhir… they have been able to gather support from large sections of Dalits across the state. RDAA Com. Jignesh and Com. Umar are young fighters of our revolution, with strong support from Com. Prakash Ambedkar, we can foresee the outcome of their efforts in consolidating many Dalit struggles across the country within a few years. Last year, in July and August, the higher committee has provided two rounds of funds to Com. Sudhir for the task… The Bhima Koregaon agitation has been very effective… the unfortunate death of a youth must be exploited to prepare future agitations and propaganda material”.

Nahar argued that some persons mentioned in the letters were neither arrested nor questioned. He said according to the investigators, the person addressed as ‘Comrade Rona’ was Rona Wilson, and the person addressed as ‘Com.M’ was alleged to be Milind Teltumbde, but there was no evidence to substantiate this. The defence pointed out that according to the prosecution, the person addressed as ‘Com Prakash Ambedkar’ was not Prakash Ambedkar. Nahar sought to know the reasoning behind this.

Police have claimed that a letter seized from an accused mentions an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a ‘Rajiv Gandhi type incident’.

Nahar claimed that the content in many letters were imaginary and could be easily exposed. “No prudent man will scan the letters they receive and store them in their computers, if the content speaks about the assassination of the Prime Minister…. The allegation against the accused is that they work covertly for a banned Maoist group, using synonyms, which are not their real names… this is absurd, unbelievable,” he said.

The lawyer also argued that the prosecution had no evidence to link the Elgaar Parishad with the banned CPI-Maoist.

Meanwhile, advocate Rahul Deshmukh, representing accused Shoma Sen, argued that there was no evidence against his client. “There are four letters which, according to investigators, were seized from other accused and carry her name,” he said. Deshmukh said the letters were not firearms or contraband substance, and mere possession of them couldn’t be termed as crimes. He also argued that in the chargesheet against the accused, there was no evidence to show that speeches at Elgaar Parishad, held at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31, 2017, had led to violence in Koregaon Bhima the next day, January 1, 2018.

The Pune City Police has so far booked 23 people in the case under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, alleging that they had active links with the banned CPI-Maoist. Of the nine activists and lawyers arrested last year, hearings on bail arguments filed by Wilson, P Varavara Rao, Sen, Sudhir Dhawale, lawyer Surendra Gadling and Mahesh Raut are being heard before Special Judge S R Navandar in Pune. The hearing will continue on October 17.

Three other arrested accused — Arun Ferriera, Vernon Gonsalves and Sudha Bharadwaj — have filed bail pleas before the Bombay High Court. The anticipatory bail plea of another accused, Anand Teltumbde, is pending before the high court. Accused Gautam Navlakha’s application seeking quashing of the FIR against him is pending before the Supreme Court.