Stan Swamy arrested in Bhima Koregaon case

THE National Investigation Agency has arrested 82-year-old human rights activist Father Stan Swamy from his Ranchi home in connection with the violence in Bhima Koregaon near Pune in December 2017 and will shift him to Mumbai, officials said on Friday.

Swamy, who has been questioned twice earlier by Pune Police and the NIA, was taken from his residence Thursday evening and placed under arrest for links with the banned CPI(Maoist), the NIA officials alleged.

He will be moved to Mumbai where the agency will ask for his remand before the designated court, they said.

The cleric is the sixteenth person to be arrested in the case, in which people have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the anti-terror law UAPA.

NIA officials said investigations established he was actively involved in the activities of the CPI (Maoist).

The NIA also alleged that he was in contact with ‘conspirators’ -- Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Hany Babu, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde – to further the group’s activities.

The agency alleged that Swamy had also received funds through an associate for furthering the agenda. Besides, he is convenor of the Persecuted

Prisoners Solidarity Committee (PPSC), a frontal organisation of the CPI(Maoist), the officials claimed.

They said literature, propaganda material of the CPI(Maoist) and documents related to communications for furthering the group’s programmes were seized from his possession.

In a video posted hours before his arrest, Swamy said the NIA had been interrogating him and had questioned him for 15 hours during a span of five days.