Prosecution seeks 14-day custody but court sends accused Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves & Varavara Rao to house arrest in accordance with SC order.
Pune: They are “urban Naxals”. They were coordinating the procurement of arms, recruiting students for the Maoist movement (including allegedly from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences), and conspiring to wage a war against the state. They are members of a banned organisation, who were involved in creating an anti-fascist front.
These are some of the claims that the prosecution has made against Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao, activists arrested by the Pune Police in connection with the Elgar Parishad that allegedly led to the 1 January Bhima-Koregaon violence.
The three accused, whose houses the police searched Tuesday and seized laptops, pen drives and documents, have been booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which is meant to punish terrorism and acts deemed detrimental to India’s sovereignty.
The prosecution sought 14-day custody, but following the Supreme Court’s verdict earlier in the day, Additional Sessions Judge K.D. Vadane informed Rao, Gonsalves and Ferreira that they will be placed under house arrest. Accordingly, the Pune Police will take Ferreira and Gonsalves back to their Mumbai and Thane homes, while Rao will be taken back to Hyderabad.
Who are the accused?
Ferreira, 48, is a criminal lawyer who was representing five activists — Surendra Gadling, Ashok Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Shoma Sen — arrested in the case in June this year. In 2007, Ferreira was arrested on the allegations of being a Naxalite, but was later acquitted.
Gonsalves, 55, is a human rights and labour rights activist, who has earlier been convicted under UAPA. His wife, Susan Abraham, was representing the five persons arrested in June.
Also read: Supreme Court stays arrest of 5 activists, says ‘dissent safety valve of any democracy’
Rao is a 78-year-old noted Telugu poet who is one of the co-founders of a platform known as the Viplava Rachayitala Sangham (Revolutionary Writers’ Association).
‘Maoists under the guise of poets and activists’
The prosecution argued that the accused were members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and were involved in creating an anti-fascist front. The Elgar Parishad, held on 31 December at Shaniwar Wada in Pune, was an attempt at creating such an anti-fascist front in Maharashtra under the name of having a Bhima-Koregaon Shaurya Abhiyaan, the prosecution said.
At least one person was killed and several injured when stones were hurled and vehicles set ablaze in villages around Bhima-Koregaon in Pune district, where Dalits from across the country were making their way for the bicentenary celebrations of the 1818 battle on 1 January.
“They show that they are human rights activists and spread the idea of Maoists in that guise…people will only see them as a poet, a human rights activist and think how can they be Maowadi,” said public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar.
“The word ‘urban naxal’ is not defined, but the way they have been using pen drives and gadgets to spread their agenda can be the right definition of the term. Systemically, each of the accused persons was given work about what is to be done,” Pawar told the court.
Several letters exchanged
The prosecution cited several letters in court allegedly exchanged between members of the CPI(Maoist) and containing references to the three accused. None of the letters, however, seemed to contain the full names of the accused, prompting the defence to question their connection with Gonsalves, Ferreira and Rao.
One particular letter, allegedly written by Wilson to one Comrade Prakash, speaks about how Rao and Ferreira had a problem with the current government and wanted to find a way to end the fascist rule, Pawar said.
Hyderabad-based Rao, the prosecution said, was a financier of a fact-finding committee constituted to probe the recent Gadchiroli encounter against alleged Naxals, in which 40 people were killed. One of the letters also talks about how ‘VV’, which the prosecution says refers to Varavara Rao, had the authority to communicate with bases in Nepal for arms and ammunition with the letter stating that “4 lakh rounds of ammunition” will be required.
Pawar claimed that Rao was also supposed to make funds available to Gadling during demonetisation to be used in places such as Gadchiroli and Bastar, but it could not be done.
Ferreira is said to have canvassed among students to find new recruits for the Maoist movement and send them for training to jungle areas. Being a cartoonist, he used anti-establishment cartoons and other materials to promote the Maoist ideology among students and is said to have inspired two-three students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to join the movement, as per arguments by the state.
Mahesh Raut, a former Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow, was also influenced by Ferreira, said the prosecutor. Activist Umar Khalid and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani too were mentioned as recruits in one of the letters Pawar read out.
Further, the prosecution claimed that Ferreira, Rao and Gonsalves also had links with banned organisations in Jammu & Kashmir that were instrumental in spreading violence in Kashmir.
No credible proof for custody, says defence
Ferreira represented himself in Tuesday’s hearing saying the prosecution’s claims were just for the “benefit of mediapersons in the courtroom”, and did not establish any grounds for seeking the custody of the accused.
“The letters were seized in April. The so-called authors of the letters have been taken into remand and interrogated…throughout the seizures, we have cooperated with the police. They have come on record to state that material seized will be sent to the forensics laboratory. Then what is the need for police custody,” Ferreira asked.
The defence also argued how there was no link between the prosecution’s arguments and the Bhima-Koregaon violence. The 1 January violence also does not attract the UAPA, as the Bhima-Koregaon clash was between two groups — Dalits and Marathas — and it is not clear if it can be termed as an act of terror, said Rohan Nahar, defence lawyer representing Rao.
He also added that there was no concrete proof of Ferreira, Gonsalves and Rao being members of the CPI (Maoist). Further, citing a 2011 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Binayak Sen, he said simply being members of a banned organisation does not amount to an offence.
Rahul Deshmukh, lawyer for Gonsalves, also argued that the presence of some of the accused on a fact-finding committee is also no offence, as the prosecution is making out to be, as it is just a group for inquiry.
Also read: Professors, poet, lawyers: The 10 ‘Maoists’ arrested for Bhima-Koregaon violence
Very difficult to judge where the truth lies. When it comes to national security, terrorism, espionage, sedition, people tend to trust the government, are willing to accept that there will be dilution of normal standards of due process. Even so, the case against these five people, most of all Smt Sudha Bharadwaj, does not seem fully trustworthy. It would have been more logical to require them to join the investigation, confront them with documentary and other evidence, take the next step after due consideration. More difficult to assess is the assassination plot, about which the police themselves seem ambivalent. Finally, throughout the country, the police is no longer seen as professionally autonomous. Simple – from an investigative point of view – cases of rape and murder are routinely transferred to the CBI because the state police cannot be trusted to be impartial.