Activist Anand Teltumbde. Pune city police will be seeking Teltumbde’s custody for further investigation in the case. (File Photo)The Pune city police have arrested Anand Teltumbde, a professor at Goa Institute of Management, in the Elgaar Parishad case for his alleged links with the banned CPI-Maoist. A special court in Pune had on Friday rejected Teltumbde’s anticipatory bail application. A team of Pune city police then arrested him from the airport in Mumbai in the early hours of Saturday around 4 am.
Assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar confirmed Teltumbde’s arrest and that he will be produced before the special court in Pune today. Pune city police will be seeking Teltumbde’s custody for further investigation in the case.
On Friday, while rejecting Teltumbde’s anticipatory bail plea, special judge K D Vadane had passed an order stating that there was sufficient material collected by the investigating officer to show his involvement in the alleged commission of offence.
The order also stated that investigation was at a very crucial stage. “It appears that custodial interrogation of accused is necessary … Therefore, the accused is not entitled to be released on anticipatory bail. Hence, anticipatory bail application deserves to be rejected,” the order had stated.
The prosecution had on Thursday submitted to court an envelope containing printouts of electronic data which they claimed proved the involvement of Teltumbde in the case. Earlier, the prosecution had filed its response before the special judge Kishor D Vadane to oppose Teltumbde’s bail application. Police have claimed they have evidence to prove that Teltumbde had been involved in ‘insurgent activities to destabilise the government’ through the banned Maoist organisation, of which he was a member, according to police.
Teltumbde, when contacted by The Indian Express on Friday after the court’s order, said he would not comment.
Teltumbde was one of the seven prominent activists whose houses were raided in a surprise multi-city search operation carried out by Pune Police on August 28 last year. Four of them – Sudha Bhardwaj, P Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Pareira – are already in police custody, having been arrested by Pune police last year. Delhi-based Gautam Navlakha has managed to obtain court orders protecting him for arrest several times during this time. The latest order protecting him from arrest extends till February 18. Pune police have not made any effort to arrest the seventh person, Ranchi-based Stan Swamy, till now.
Pune police have been investigating charges of naxal involvement in Elgaar Parishad, an evening event organised in Pune on December 31, 2017, a day before the 200thanniversary of battle of Bhima Koregaon, during which violent clashes had been witnessed in an around Pune. Police claim that speeches made during Elgaar Parishad were in part responsible for triggering the violence the next day. While investigating the alleged naxal involvement in organising Elgaar Parishad, Pune police claimed to have stumbled upon evidence that uncovered larger conspiracies and activities of banned group CPI-Maoist. Police claim that the searches against the activists, and their later arrests, were based on such evidence that allegedly showed these activists’ involvement in the activities of CPI-Maoist.
In a similar operation in June last year, Pune police had arrested another five activists and lawyers in the same case. Those five are also in police custody now.
Teltumbde had moved the Supreme Court seeking the quashing of FIR filed by Pune police against him. The court had, on January 14, declined his plea, but granted him four weeks’ time to seek bail from the trial court. Teltumbde had then applied for anticipatory bail in the city court in Pune on January 18.
During the hearings on his bail application, the Pune police had claimed that Teltumbde was allegedly involved in ‘insurgent activities to destabilise the government’ through the banned Maoist organisation. Police claimed he was a member of the banned Maoist organisation.
On Thursday, investigating officer Shivaji Pawar submitted an envelope to the court through public prosecutor Ujwala Pawar. “The envelope contains some printouts of the electronic data which shows involvement of Teltumbde in the activities linked to the case, before and after the Elgaar Parishad. This data, which has both phone and email records, is a strong counter point on defence’s claim that police do not have anything other than the four seized communications.” a police officer had said.
During the hearings, prosecution lawyer Ujawala Pawar also referred to a seized communication purportedly written by ‘Comrade M’ who, according to police is Milind Teltumbde, Anand Teltumbde’s brother and an alleged underground Maoist, also an accused in this case. “The letter has a reference ‘brother Anand’ which is no one else but Anand Teltumbde,” she claimed.
Teltumbde’s lawyer Rohan Nahar had said the prosecution did not have any evidence to link his client to the letters produced by the police in the court. “The claim that ‘Brother Anand’ is a reference to him, is utterly baseless,” he had argued.
Giving details of Teltumbde’s qualification and awards, Nahar had said that he was a leading public intellectual who has been framed in this case because he wrote content in his articles which was not liked by those who are in power. Nahar had also read out parts from Teltumbde’s articles in which he made mentions of alleged role of Hindutva leaders in Koregaon Bhima violence.
