Elgar case: Pune court upholds transfer of case to special NIA court

PUNE: The Pune sessions court on Friday passed an order upholding transfer of all the case records related to the Bhima Koregaon Elgar Parishad case to the Special NIA (National Investigation Agency) court in Mumbai. All the accused in the case will be produced before the NIA court on February 28. The Pune police have also submitted to the court that they were prepared to hand over the case to the NIA. Additional Sessions Judge SR Navandar passed the order on Friday afternoon.

The Maharashtra government on Thursday, in principle, agreed to transfer the 2018 Elgar Parishad case to the NIA in accordance with the January 25 decision by the central government directing the NIA to take over the probe. The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi coalition government was initially opposed to this transfer as directed by the Union home ministry and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar had demanded constitution of a SIT (special investigations team) into the case.

Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh on Thursday admitted that there was a difference of opinion within the government led by the Shiv Sena with the NCP and the Congress as coalition partners.

Deshmukh had said that chief minister Uddhav Thackeray used his discretionary powers to approve the handover and overruled his decision. The home minister added that the government was considering the possibility of constituting a SIT to probe the case and the home department was consulting the state’s advocate general .

Previously, Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar in her submission before the court had objected to the NIA application for this transfer stating that the NIA application was not legally tenable under the provisions of the law, especially as per the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967 and NIA Act, 2008.

She said the NIA has not given legal and sufficient reasons for transferring the said proceedings to the special court of NIA in Mumbai.additional sessions Judge SR Navandar, heard the state and NIA counsels and had reserved his order on Feb 14.

The case relates to the violence on New Year’s Day in 2018 on the banks of the Bhima river, where thousands of people, mostly Dalits, had gathered to mark the anniversary of an 1818 victory of the British Army.