Pan-India raids: All accused to be put under house arrest till September 6, rules the Supreme Court

A day after pan India raids, conducted by Pune Police, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that all the accused will be put under house arrest till September 6, which is the next hearing in the case.

However, in a press briefing right after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Pune police alleged that the “analysis of seized documents reveals the conspiracy is hatched by the CPI (Maoist) party, adding evidence procured by them “points to the role of Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves”.

The Pune police also alleged that they have concrete evidence of Maoist link in the case.

Earlier in the day, the Maharashtra government while reacting to NHRC’s notice alleging human rights violation through the detention, had said that they have “enough evidence” against those detained.

“We have arrested these accused because we got evidence against them,” said the Maharashtra government.

The NHRC while taking suo-moto cognizance of the detentions had accused the police authorities of not following the standard operating procedures, which it said, was the violation of their human rights.

The five people, namely, Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves were detained on Tuesday by the Pune police in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence.

All search warrants and detentions were carried out under anti-terror UAPA law and IPC sections 153A, 505(1)(b), 117, 120(b) and 34.

Earlier in June this year, as a part of the probe in the Bhima-Koregaon violence, Pune police had arrested 5 people, namely, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut and Rana Jacob, in June, for allegedly delivering hate speeches and distributing disputed pamphlets. Later in June itself, while addressing a press briefing, Ravindra Kadam, Joint CP, Pune, had confirmed that the 5 accused persons have links with Naxals.

During the briefing, Kadam had said that their Naxal links were confirmed following the information and material ascertained from them. Kadam also said that a some among the arrested have been booked earlier for their Naxal links. After the arrests, the police have also recovered a letter containing the plan of a Rajiv Gandhi type assassination plot for Prime Minister Modi.

The recent detentions by the Pune police were seen as the outcome of the arrests of the 5 people in June and information ascertained from them.