The wife of lawyer Surendra Gadling on Friday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking bail for him and four others who were arrested by the Pune Police in June, ANI reported.
Gadling, professor Shoma Sen and activists Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale were arrested in June from Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi. They were accused of having Maoist links and charged under sections of the controversial Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA. Labelling them “urban Maoist operatives”, the police claimed to have found evidence that they were plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The lawyer’s wife moved the court seeking relief since it had stayed the transit remand of five other activists on Wednesday. The court ordered that they would be under house arrest till the next hearing on September 6.
Police officials claim that the violence that erupted in Bhima Koregaon on January 1 was incited by the speeches of Dalit rights activists at an “Elgar Parishad” event held in Pune a day before, and that this event was funded by banned Maoist outfits.
In a multi-city operation on Tuesday, the Pune Police raided the homes of several human rights activists in connection with investigations into the same event at Bhima Koregaon. Five of them – Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, Gautam Navlakha in New Delhi, Sudha Bharadwaj in Faridabad, and Varavara Rao in Hyderabad – were arrested by the end of the day.
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