Activists mobilised Dalits to topple govt at Bhima Koregaon: Police

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Police on Wednesday told the Bombay high court that activists arrested in connection with the KoregaonBhima violence and Maoist links were mobilising Dalits to achieve the motive of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to “overthrow the government”.

Pune’s assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar said this in an affidavit filed before the court to oppose the bail plea filed by one of the accused, Arun Ferriera. Apart from Ferriera, police earlier arrested eight other activists, including Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj, P Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde.

Ferriera and Gonsalves later filed bail petitions which came up for hearing on Wednesday before Justice PN Deshmukh, who posted the matter for April 5. The police are yet to submit the affidavit over Gonsalves’s petition.

In their affidavit, Pune police claimed that Ferriera and the other accused were senior members of the banned CPI (Maoist). They were “actively supporting and propagating the banned outfit’s unlawful activities to overthrow the government established by law”, police said.

“With a view to attain this motive, the organisation is waging not the old type of conventional war but a people’s war by mobilising public on a massive scale both military and politically,” the affidavit said. “The CPI (Maoist) is undertaking special efforts to build the party among Dalit masses. They try to rally Dalit masses extensively by taking up struggles for their selfrespect and against discrimination, oppression, degradation and physical attacks by the upper caste feudal forces in order to achieve their motive,” it added.