Bhima Koregaon case: HC refuses bail to 3 activists

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court refused bail on Tuesday to activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, arrested for allegedly inciting caste-based violence at Koregaon-bhima in Pune and Maoist links, noting that they were “act i ve members” of banned outfit CPI (Maoist).

J u s t i c e S a r a n g Kot wal rejected the bail pleas of the three civil liberties activists, observing that there was prima facie evidence against them.

In three separate orders, the judge said the accused were active and senior members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), and arranged funds for the organisation and recruited cadres.

The Pune police lodged a case against them in January, 2018 after the Elgar Parishad held on December 31, 2017 allegedly triggered violence at KoregaonBhima village in Maharashtra’s Pune district the next day.

The scope of the investigation was not restricted to finding out the object and effect of the programme organised on December 31, 2017 by the Elgar Parishad or carrying out a probe into the violence that followed the event, the court said. “The investigation was expanded to unearth a much larger conspiracy of seizing political power through an armed revolution by mobilising the masses,” it said.

Justice Kotwal further said one of t he objectives of t he b a nned o r g a ni s a t i o n was defeating the “enemy forces”

with the use of weapons and by forming a people’s army.

The t hree were i ni t i al l y placed under house arrest by the Pune police in August last year and later, taken into custody on October 26 after a sessions court in Pune rejected their bail pleas.

The accused, who are in jail since then, approached the HC last year.

The police booked the three and several other activists under the provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).