HYDERABAD/PUNE: Police arrested five activists, who they claimed had links to the banned
Communist Party of India (Maoist), during simultaneous raids on Tuesday, which started early in the morning in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Thane, Ranchi, Delhi and
Faridabad.
The raids and arrests were in connection with the Elgar Parishad, a public meeting, held in Pune on December 31, 2017, a day before the violence at
Koregaon Bhima, 60km from Pune.
The five arrested are civil rights activist and revolutionary writer P Varavara Rao (Hyderabad), lawyer Vernon Gonsalves (Mumbai), human rights activist-lawyer Arun Ferreira (Thane), activist-lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj (Faridabad) and human rights activist Gautam Navlakha (Delhi).
The police also questioned octogenarian activist and priest Stan Swamy during a raid on his house in Ranchi. Another police team went to an institute in Goa to question writer Anand Teltumbde. However, Teltumbde was not at the institute.
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