New Delhi: Poet-activist Varavara Rao has opposed the National Investigation Agency’s plea to cancel his bail in the 2018 Elgar Parishad case, saying he was merely an invitee to a Mumbai Press Club dinner and was unaware that other co-accused had also been invited, countering the NIA’s argument that they had violated bail conditions.
Rao was responding to a plea by the NIA, which moved the Special Court in May, seeking cancellation of the bail granted to Rao and other co-accused following a meeting on the terrace of the Mumbai Press Club on 19 January.
According to the agency, the accused had violated their bail conditions that prohibited them from contacting or communicating with one another.
In his response before the Special Court in Mumbai last week, Rao objected to the NIA’s allegations that the 19 January meeting was intended to propagate the ideology of the banned organisation CPI (Maoist) and to discuss the future course of action for spreading the ‘Urban Naxal’ movement, calling it a mere assumption by the agency.
Apart from Rao, the other co-accused who attended the meeting were Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Anand Teltumbde, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Vernon Gonsalves, and Hany Babu.
Gonsalves and Ferreira appeared in person before the court. Bhardwaj’s legal team has yet to decide whether to file a written objection to the NIA’s plea, ThePrint has learnt. The case is scheduled for a hearing on 10 July.
The NIA case stems from two FIRs filed by the Maharashtra Police after violence broke out at Bhima Koregaon on 1 January, 2018. Police arrested activists Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen and Mahesh Raut in June that year and invoked sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or the UAPA, in the case.
Rao, Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, and Gautam Navlakha were arrested in August 2018.
On the orders of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the NIA took up the case in January 2020 and went on to arrest Dalit activist Anand Teltumbde, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, and Delhi University associate professor Hany Babu. Swamy died in prison at the age of 84 in July 2021. The others were released on bail between December 2021 and May this year.
The present proceedings stem from the Mumbai Press Club’s decision to expel three members— senior journalists Gurbir Singh, Bernard D’Mello, and Shrikant Modak—for facilitating the 19 January gathering of the accused persons out on bail.
Two days later, the NIA sent a team to the club’s office to conduct an inquiry before moving the court to seek cancellation of the bail of all co-accused who attended the meeting.
Rao’s argument
In response to the NIA’s plea, Rao’s counsel Sathyanarayanan Iyer told the court that the agency had failed to produce any evidence to back the claim that it was a meeting designed to discuss the future course of action of the CPI (Maoist).
Instead, he argued that the invitees’ statements the NIA relied on contradicted the prosecution’s story. He said their statements established that all the co-accused discussed issues such as prison life, Navlakha’s future course of action following his move to Delhi, how to proceed in the case against Gadling and his prospects of release, and prevailing health conditions in prison.
“In this backdrop, there is nothing to decipher it was the Applicant who invited other accused, there is also no evidence to show that each of Accused were having knowledge about the other co accused being invitees /, there is also nothing to show that any accused tried to contact or communicate with co-accused and in fact or any other person involved in similar activities,” Rao’s counsel submitted in the response.
“Could the condition the accused shall not try to contact or communicate with co-accused or any other person involved in similar activities, be said to be violated, given the situation, would be the moot question. Had the NIA been able to show that Shrikant Modak and Bernard D’Mello had informed each other that the other co-accused had accepted their invitation, etc., the scenario would have been different,” he submitted.
The oral invite was sent by a third party “with an altogether different intention,” the petition said, adding that all the accused involved in the subject “came together unknowingly to discuss purportedly an unknown subject.”
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)