A special court on Sunday remanded firebrand poet and literary critic P. Varavara Rao to police custody till November 26 for his alleged links with the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist).
The 78-year-old Mr. Rao, a revolutionary Telugu writer well-known for his vocal and trenchant anti-establishment views, was taken by into custody by a team of the Pune police from his residence in Hyderabad late Saturday after the Hyderabad High Court on November 15 had refused to extend his house arrest.
Mr. Rao, who has been charged with procuring arms for the Maoists, funding the spread of ‘Urban Naxalism’, as well as plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Modi among other things, was produced before the court late afternoon.
The Hyderabad High Court had turned down Mr. Rao’s plea which sought the quashing of a transit remand issued by a Hyderabad magistrate. This led the Pune police to take the noted poet into custody from his home on Saturday evening, amid impassioned scenes which saw a large number of Mr. Rao’s supporters condemning the arrest and raising slogans against the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mr. Rao was first arrested on August 28 as part of a wider probe into the Elgaar Parishad and the subsequent Bhima-Koregaon clashes by the Pune police along with civil rights activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves.
However, on August 30, the Supreme Court had stayed the Pune police’s action by directing all Ms. Bharadwaj, Mr. Gonsalves, Mr. Ferreira, Mr. Rao and Mr. Navlakha to be placed under house arrest — a period which was extended from time to time.
On September 28, the Apex Court finally refused any further extensions, while granting a period of four-week period to the activists to exercise legal remedies available and rejecting a plea by historian Romila Thapar and others seeking the immediate release of the arrested activists.
Mr. Rao’s incendiary writings sympathetic to the plight of the downtrodden have brought him in continual conflict with the Telangana police and government in the past 40 years. Despite being charged in more than a score cases, he has been acquitted in every one of them.
Ms. Bharadwaj, Mr. Gonsalves and Mr. Ferreira, who are presently in judicial custody, have been charged with receiving funds from the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) and allegedly recruiting cadres from prominent educational establishments like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in a bid to spread Naxalism.
On Thursday, the city police had submitted a 5,160-page charge sheet against the five activists arrested by the Pune City police during the first countrywide crackdown on June 6 for their alleged linkages with the Maoists and the Bhima-Koregaon clashes of January 1.
It charged human rights lawyer Surendra Gadling, Nagpur University English Professor Shoma Sen and activists Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut and activist Rona Wilson with seditious activities, distorting history and attempting to overthrow a democratically elected government. The charge to assassinate the Prime Minister was again leveled against them in the indictment.
The charge sheet, which reiterates the Pune police’s contention that the ‘Elgaar Parishad’ triggered the Bhima-Koregaon clashes, also named five alleged members of the Maoists hierarchy including Milind Teltumbde, Comrade Prakash alias Navin alias Ritupan Goswami, Comrades Manglu and Deepu, and Kisan alias Prashanto Bose, all whom are described as being “underground” in the indictment.
The two countrywide swoops by the Pune police — in June and in August — were based on an FIR registered at the city’s Vishrambaug Wada police station in connection with ostensibly provocative speeches made during the controversial Elgaar Parishad.
The FIR was based on a complaint by one Tushar Damgude against six participants, including Mr. Dhawale, of the Parishad. Those named in the FIR were members of the Kabir Kala Manch – a radical Dalit cultural troupe.
The complaint had accused the KKM activists of making a number of “inflammatory” speeches and delivering “socially divisive” presentations during the course of the troupe’s performance and recitals at the ‘Elgaar Parishad’, which lasted nearly eight hours and witnessed the participation of thousands of persons from more than 250 progressive social outfits including several left-leaning and Ambedkarite groups across Maharashtra.