Sharad Pawar would have suspended Pune Police Commissioner

NP NEWS 24 ONLINE: PUNE:  In a major statement, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo and senior leader Sharad Pawar said that he would have
suspended Pune police commissioner for Elgar Parishad case, if he was in power.

Pawar was speaking during Shivgaurav award ceremony, where he felicitated former justice BG Kolse-Patil, M Deshmukh, Dada Pasalkar, Pratap Gangawane and Shantanu Moghe.

“There is Democracy in this country. Everybody has right to express their views. I understand you don’t agree with others views, but you went ahead and put some people in jail for this. We are thankful that there is Supreme Court in this country to safeguard our rights. We should come together and let these people that these things will not be tolerated”, said Pawar, while referring to the government.

Elgaar Parishad was held at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31, 2017 ahead of the 200th commemoration of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. The next day ie on January 1 when lakhs of people mostly from Dalit community had gathered at Koregaon Bhima, there was large-scale violence in which one Maratha youth was killed while properties worth crores were damaged.

Based on complaint from one Tushar Damgude, Vishrambaug police station had registered case against organisers of Elgaar Parishad who included Harshali Potdar, Sudhir Dhawale of Republican Panthers (RP), Mumbai and Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap, Deepak Dhengle of the Pune based Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) which is accused of being frontal organisation of banned CPI (Maoist).

There was another case against Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani and student leader Umar Khalid for allegedly giving provocative speeches during at the Elgaar Parishad.

According to police, the Parishad was organized as part of Maoist strategy to mobilize people against the elected government and spread violence.

After a thorough investigation, police arrested Rona Wilson in Delhi, lawyer Surendra Gadling in Nagpur, Sudhir Dhawle in Mumbai, Professor Shoma Sen and former Prime Minister Rural Development (PMRD) fellow Mahesh Raut in Nagpur. The first charge sheet was filed against advocate Surendra Gadling, activists Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut and Sudhir Dhavale in November last year. They were arrested in June 2018.

Police have also booked four underground Maoist operatives Milind Teltumbde, Prakash alias Ritupam Goswami, Manglu and Deepu for allegedly planning to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A supplementary chargesheet running into 1837 pages was filed by the Pune city police on February 21 at a special UAPA court against five persons including activist Sudha Bharadwaj and one of the most wanted Maoist leader Ganapathy in Elgar Parishad case. The chargesheet is against Bharadwaj, Telugu poet & Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao (84), activists Arun Ferriera, Vernon Gonsalves and general secretary of CPI (Maoist) Ganapathy alias Chandrashekhar, who is one of the most wanted Maoists. They were arrested in September 2018.

The chargesheet includes evidence seized from the accused persons as well as those retrived from electronic devices seized from them.

All of them have been booked for offences under Indian Penal Code sections 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and IPC sections 505 (Statements conducing to public mischief) and 117 (Abetting commission of offence by the public) and stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).