THE writer and activist Gautam Navlakha’s case is another example of blatant persecution and, perhaps, miscarriage of justice. Among the 10 persons charged in the Bhima Koregaon violence case, Navlakha was the only one not imprisoned. He was, however, placed under house arrest and has since been fighting a legal battle to clear the charges against him.
On October 1, the case took a curious turn when Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi recused himself from hearing the case. His plea was then listed before a bench consisting of Justices N.V. Ramana, R. Subash Reddy and B.R. Gavai. Almost immediately, all three judges recused themselves. On October 3, a day before the Supreme Court was to hear his appeal to quash the first information report (FIR) filed against him, Justice Ravindra Bhat, the fifth judge appointed to the bench, also recused himself from the case.
Fortunately, Navlakha’s lawyer, A.M. Singhvi, had asked the Supreme Court to list Navlakha’s plea to scrap the FIR on October 4, the day his interim protection from arrest ended. The court not only extended the protection to October 15, but directed the Maharashtra government to place before it the material collected during the ongoing investigation against Navlakha. The unprecedented recusal of judges could have arisen because of conflict of interests, but Singhvi said five judges unwilling to hear the case was unusual. Obviously, the recusals form a setback for Navlakha.
Navlakha’s case had come up in the Bombay High Court on September 13. The court refused to quash the FIR filed against him in 2017 in the Bhima Koregaon case, which accuses him of having Maoist links. The Maharashtra government insisted that there was prima facie substance in the case. The High Court gave Navlakha two weeks to file an appeal in the Supreme Court and that is when the court drama began.
Evidence has emerged suggesting that Navlakha had no connection with the Elgar Parishad meeting in Pune, which allegedly triggered the Bhima Koregaon violence. He was not present at the gathering and he does not know the organisers or what the event was about. Those who know him believe that it was because of his persistent questioning of the government’s agenda on Jammu and Kashmir that he was targeted and that the Bhima-Koregaon incident was an excuse to silence him.
At least Navlakha has reached a point where he can try to have the FIR quashed. The other nine persons charged in the Bhima Koregaon case are languishing in prison in Pune fighting for basic rights such as reading material and blankets.
In June 2018, five rights activists were arrested for their alleged links with naxalites, who, according to the police, funded the Elgar Parishad meeting that saw hundreds of Dalits congregate in Pune on December 31, 2017. The activists were also charged with conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The authorities believe the Elgar Parishad instigated the violence that erupted on January 1, 2018, at the Bhima Koregaon monument near Ahmednagar.
One person died and hundreds were injured when a mob of reportedly Maratha youths attacked the Dalit community who had congregated to commemorate the Bhima Koregaon battle. A division of the British army defeated the Peshwa rulers in the battle and the Dalit fighters in the British division had played a stellar role in the victory.
Instead of going after the real perpetrators, the police arrested Surendra Gadling, a human rights lawyer from Nagpur; Sudhir Dhawale, the Dalit rights leader and editor of Vidrohi ; Rona Wilson, a New Delhi-based social activist; Shoma Sen, a professor of English in Nagpur University; and Mahesh Raut, a former Prime Minister’s Rural Development fellow.
In August 2018, the police raided the premises of the rights activists Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao and Gautam Navlakha. Other than Navlakha, the other four were arrested and sent to a prison in Pune. They were also accused of being part of the Bhima Koregaon “controversy”.
All of them were charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, which gives no scope for anticipatory bail. A year after the arrests, there has been little progress in their cases. Sudha Bharadwaj was allowed to visit her daughter once. Informed sources say her health is deteriorating. A lawyer working on the case says that despite the families of the detainees spending so much time in court the cases have made no progress. The hearings keep getting postponed. They do not have the resources to hire criminal lawyers and a sense of helplessness has set in. Families of the victims do not speak to the media for fear of it being used against them.
A look at some of their profiles makes one wonder how any of them can be called naxalites. Sudha Bharadwaj, for instance, has dedicated her life to fighting for labour rights and against land acquisition in Chhattisgarh. Gonsalves is an academic and a well-known activist in Mumbai. A prolific writer, he speaks out against the undemocratic ways of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Arun Ferreira, a social worker and civil rights lawyer, had been out of jail for just a few years when he was arrested again in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence. He had spent six years in jail following accusations of being a naxalite. Sudhir Dhawale works for the upliftment of the Dalit community in Pune and Shoma Sen is a salaried academic at Nagpur University and a women’s rights activist. The police claim they recovered information from computers and unearthed documents that were incriminating and could prove the accused guilty.
The only plausible explanation for the arrests is that all the accused have fought for human/civil rights against the establishment.
Anupama Katakam
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