The Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the Bombay High Court order refusing to grant 90 days extension to Maharashtra Police for filing the charge sheet in the Bhima Koregaon violence case, giving no relief to five arrested ‘Urban Naxals’ named in the violence, reports ANI.
According to the reports, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and L Nageswara Rao setting aside the judgement said that the five alleged ‘Urban Naxals’-Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut and Sudhir Dhavale may now seek regular bail in the case as the Maharashtra Police has already filed the charge sheet.
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The arrested accused had claimed that they were entitled to grant of default bail in the case as the Maharashtra Police did not file the charge sheet within the specified 90 days period and the extension granted by the trial court to the police was bad in law.
The appeal was filed against the order of the Bombay High Court, which had effectively set aside the Special Court’s order extending the detention of the accused of the purpose of completing the investigation into the Bhima Koregaon matter.
The five suspected ‘Urban Maoists’ were arrested by the Pune police on 6 June 2018, over charges of organising the Elgaar Parishad held at Pune’s Shaniwarwada on 31 December 2017, which is believed to have instigated the Bhima-Koregaon violence a day later.
The Pune police had filed a 5,000-page charge sheet, which had names of 10 persons, including Nagpur-based lawyer Surendra Gadling, Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale of Republican Panthers. Addition to these five, absconding underground Maoists Milind Teltumbde, Prakash alias Ritupam Goswami, Prashant Bose alias Kishan da, Manglu and Deepu have also been named in the charge sheet.
Apart from these ten alleged ‘Urban Naxals’, in a nation-wide crackdown, the police had arrested activist P Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, ‘human rights activist’ and ‘journalist’ Gautam Navlakha in Delhi, ‘activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Pereira in Mumbai, ‘civil rights’ lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Delhi, civil rights ‘activist’ Anand Teltumbde in Goa and ‘activist’ Stan Swamy in Ranchi in relation with Elgar Parishad violence and plot to kill the Prime Minister Modi.
