Koregaon Bhima-Elgar Parishad case: Arun Ferreira,Vernon Gonsalves remanded to police custody till Nov 6

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE – A special district court on Saturday remanded activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves to police custody till Nov 6. Sudha Bhardwaj will be produced later in the afternoon. They are accused of having links with Maoists, new recruitment, raising funds for them as well as acting as couriers for communication between top leaders of the banned organization CPI (Maoist).

District government pleader Ujwala Pawar demanded 14 days police custody for Ferreira and Gonsalves. She informed the court that police has corroborative evidence against them.

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Defence lawyer Sidharth Patil argued that as per Supreme Court order, the house arrest was supposed to end at 12 midnight on 26th Oct, hence Pune police should be tried for contempt of court as they took both the accused in custody before the set time limit.

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Earlier in June police had arrested advocate Sudhir Gadling (49) of Nagpur, Sudhir Pralhad Dhawale (50) of Mumbai, Rona Jacob Wilson (47) of New Delhi, Prof Dr. Shoma Sen (58) of Nagpur and Mahesh Sitaram Raut (31) of Nagpur. They are currently lodged in Yerwada Central Jail.

The police had earlier informed the court the accused advocate Surendra Gadling and others are being prosecuted for very serious offence that they have provoked terrorism and responsible for communal tension in the State of Maharashtra. Due to their unlawful activities, violence occurred at Bhima-Koregaon and they have connections with Communist Part of India (Mao), the banned organization.

Elgar Parishad was organised on December 31, 2017, at Shaniwarwada, Pune, a day before the violence at Koregaon-Bhima on January 1,2018, during commemoration of 200 years of a war there.

According to police, the accused persons are facing prosecution under sections 153A, 505(1)(B), 117, 120B r/w section 34 of the Indian Penal Code and under sections 13, 16, 17, 18, 18B, 20, 38, 39 and 40 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. Most of the accused are arrested in the month of June, 2018 on different dates and at present, they are in judicial custody. None of them is on bail. As per section 167(2)(a)(i) and (ii) of Code of Criminal Procedure, the investigation of the offence is to be completed within 90 days if the investigation relates to the offence punishable with death, imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term of not less than 10 years.