The National Investigation Agency on Wednesday moved a special court seeking that bail be cancelled for activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves in the Bhima Koregaon case, the Hindustan Times reported.
The agency alleged that the activists violated the conditions of their release by attending a gathering at the Mumbai Press Club earlier this year.
Gonsalves and Ferreira were arrested in August 2018 and spent almost five years in custody before the Supreme Court granted them regular bail in July 2023, with certain conditions.
On May 15, the NIA, in the same case, had sought that the bail granted to activists Varavara Rao and Sudha Bharadwaj be cancelled, citing the same Mumbai Press Club event. The agency had submitted then that the bail conditions for Rao and Bharadwaj barred them from contacting or communicating with other accused persons.
On Wednesday, Special Judge Chakor S Baviskar directed Ferreira and Gonsalves to file their replies to the NIA’s application. The matter will be heard on June 19.
In the application seeking the cancellation of bail of the activists, the NIA claimed that the gathering at the Mumbai Press Club was convened with the intention of propagating the ideology of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and decide on the future of the “Urban Naxal movement”, the Hindustan Times reported.
In April, the Mumbai Press Club suspended three members for having “facilitated” the gathering on January 19. The NIA had, on May 1, sought documents from the press club related to the gathering.
A Mumbai City Civil Court on May 7 stayed the expulsion of one of the Mumbai Press Club members, Gurbir Singh.
It held that on a preliminary reading, action had been taken against him “only with an intent to prevent him from contesting the elections of the club”.
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The case
The Bhima Koregaon case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.
The NIA has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sixteen people were arrested in the case.
But when the Supreme Court in 2023 granted bail to two persons accused in the case, it noted that the primary evidence cited by the NIA – a batch of letters – was of “weak probative value or quality”. In addition, a digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, concluded that false evidence had been planted on the laptops and devices of the accused persons.
Of the 16 accused persons, 14 have been released on bail. Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who was also accused in the case, died in prison in 2021.
Another accused man, Surendra Gadling, got bail from the Bombay High Court on May 4. However, he remains in jail as his bail application in a 2016 arson case is pending before the Supreme Court.
Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.
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