In nationwide raids, Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha among 5 ‘urban Maoists’ held for plotting to kill Modi
In a third major crackdown on Maoist sympathisers across the country in four months, the Pune Police on Tuesday arrested five prominent activists, including revolutionary writer P Varavara Rao, for their association with the Elgaar Parishad held in Pune ahead of the January 1, 2018 Bhima-Koregaon riots and their alleged links with Maoists.
The latest arrests should be seen in the backdrop of a claim made by the Pune Police on June 8 that they had uncovered a plot by the Maoists to carry out “Rajiv Gandhi-type” assassination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The investigators had made the claim on the basis of a purported letter that they had produced while seeking the custody of five “Maoist-linked” activists for their role in Bhima-Koregaon riots, that spoke about a plan of “targeting his (Modi’s) roadshows as an “effective strategy” to eliminate the Prime Minister. Following up on their April 17 raids on the premises of Dalits and others associated with the Elgaar Parishad and the arrest of four Dalit activists and a Nagpur University professor with alleged Maoist links on June 6, the Pune Police teams carried out simultaneous searches at 10 places in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Goa, Hyderabad, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Haryana and arrested five activists having links with the banned CPI(Maoist).
Apart from Varavara Rao, the four other activists are Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Pereira, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha.
While Varavara Rao was arrested by a visiting team of Pune Police from Hyderabad, two known Maoist sympathisers Thomas Pereira, alias Arun Kotian, and Vernon Gonsalves, were arrested from Thane and Mumbai respectively. Sudha Bharadwaj was arrested from Faridabad, while a visiting team placed Gautam Navlakha under arrest in New Delhi.
“We have arrested five persons in connection with an “Elgaar Parishad” held at Shaniwarwada in Pune on December 31, 2017 a day before the Bhima-Koregaon riots. We made the arrests after conducting raids at multiple locations in six States, “Pune Joint Commissioner of Police Shivajirao Bodkhe said.
Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court directed that Navlakha should not be taken away from the national Capital till it hears the matter on Wednesday morning. A Bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel said Navlakha will remain at his residence under police guard and be allowed to meet only his lawyers. The High Court was hearing a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of Navlakha by his advocate Warisha Farasat after he was picked up from his Delhi home on Tuesday afternoon by the Maharashtra Police in connection with the December 31 last year violence at Koregaon-Bhima village.
During their raids, the investigators seized huge chunks of documents and “incriminating” material linking the arrested persons to the Maoists.
The arrests sparked widespread protests among the civil society members and activists across the country.
“The arrests are nothing but an attempt by the Government to strike terror among those who are fighting for justice for the marginalised.
This is also an attempt by the BJP to invent a false enemy and engage in scaremongering in order to polarise the 2019 elections in its favour,” civil society members and activists Shehla Rashid Shora, Jignesh Mewani, Teesta Setalvad, Swami Agnivesh, Admiral (Retd) l Ramdas, Shabnam Hashmi, journalist and writer Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and others stated in a joint statement.
“Already, the Government and the media houses close to the BJP have been trying to spin a false narrative of a Maoist conspiracy since June, 2018. Terms like “urban Naxals” are invented in order to stifle any criticism of the Government,” the statement said.
Dubbing the latest arrests as “the Government’s attempts to silence the masses” in the wake of the recent crackdown on the Hindu right-wing group Sanatan Sanstha, Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) president and late BR Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar said: “Henceforth, the NGOs which are hitherto non-political will become more active and aggressive that they were earlier in opposing this (BJP) Government… in order to safeguard democracy and human rights”.
The arrest of Varavara Rao from his Hyderabad residence has come as a shock. Amid slogan shouting by human rights activists gathered outside his residence. Rao was whisked away by the police after an eight-hour-long search carried at his house.
A visiting Pune Police team, which had arrived in Hyderabad on Monday night, carried out simultaneous searches at the houses of eight persons including professor Satyanarayana of EFlU (English and Foreign languages University), two journalists who are close to Varavara Rao.
After entering the houses of all those, including Satyanarayana, the police physically barred them from communicating people outside. “They even did not allow relatives and friends to contact Varavara or his wife,” human rights activist N Venu Gopal said.
Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira claimed that they had been falsely implicated in the case. “It is a clear attempt to target human rights activists across the country,” Pereira said. “We are being falsely implicated,” Gonsalves said.
Denying that the police had framed the five arrested activists in the Elgaar Parishad case, Maharashtra’s Minister of State for Home Deepak Kesarkar said that the arrests had been made based on evidence. “The arrested persons are educated. In Gadchiroli, the Maoists are from rural hinterland. The five activists have been arrested after the police found links with Maoist organisations and people”.
Tuesday’s arrests of five “Maoist-linked” activists were made under the FIR registered on January 8 at the Pune’s Vishram Baug Police Station in connection with the Elgar Parishad organised on December 31, 2017 by the leftist outfit Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) and Republican Panthers Party ahead of the January 1, 2018 Bhima-Koregaon riots. The FIR, originally registered u/s 153(A), 505 (1)(b), 117 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), was made a conspiracy case in March 2018 and now has sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) added to it.
Tuesday’s arrests came on the heels of similar arrests on June 6 of five Maoist-linked activists Human Rights activists Rona Wilson Jacob, general secretary Indian Association of People’s lawyers from Nagpur Surendra Gadling, Editor Vidrohi from Mumbai, Sudhir Dhawale, Prof Shoma Sen, Head of Department of English, Nagpur University and, anti-displacement activist from Bharat Jan Andolan Mahesh Raut, and the recovery of an incriminating letter, which uncovered an alleged plot by the Maoists to carry out “Rajiv Gandhi-type” assassination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The scanned copy of the letter was among the virtual and physical documents recovered by the investigators during their simultaneous raids conducted by the investigators on April 17 in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpiur on residences of various Dalit leaders and other functionaries associated with the Elgaar Parishad organised in Pune ahead of the January 1, 2018 caste riots.
The letter, written by “R” (which the investigators suspect might be Rona Jacob himself) and addressed to one comrade Prakash, states: “We are thinking along the lines of another Rajiv Gandhi-type incident. It sounds suicidal and there is a good chance we might fail but we feel the party must deliberate over our proposal. Targeting his roadshows could be an effective strategy. We collectively believe that survival of the party is supreme to all sacrifices”.
The letter also talks about the requirement of Rs 8 crore to procure M-4 rifles as an annual supply and four lakh rounds of ammunition.
Among other things, the letter states: “Modi-led Hindu fascist regime is bulldozing its way into the lives of indigenous adivasis, in spite of big defeats like Bihar and West Bengal. Modi has successfully established the BJP Government in more than 15 States. If this pace continues then it would mean immense trouble for the party on all fronts. Greater suppression of dissent and more brutal form of Mission 2016 (OGH). Com. Kisan and few other comrades have proposed concrete steps to end Modi-raj”.
“Defeating Hindu fascism has been our core agenda and a major concern for the party.... We are trying to consolidate ties with like-minded organisations, political parties, representatives of minorities across the country,” the letter stated.
It may be recalled that on January 1, one Rahul Phatangale (28), a Dalit, was killed and another 40-odd vehicles and some other property were damaged after some miscreants attacked Dalits celebrating the January 1, 1818 victory of British troops over Peshwa Bajirao II’s army at Bhima-Koregaon in Pune district of western Maharashtra. Following the incident, Maharashtra had witnessed large-scale Dalit protests which turned violent at some places.