Activists wanted Dalits to overthrow govt: Cops

Mumbai: The Maharashtra police told the Bombay high court that activists arrested in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence and Maoist links were mobilising Dalits to achieve the goal of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) to “overthrow the government”. The police made the statement during the hearing of bail plea of one of the accused, Arun Ferreira.

Pune’s assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar filed an affidavit before Justice P.N. Deshmukh to oppose the bail plea of Mr Ferreira. In its affidavit, the Pune police claimed that Mr Ferreira and the other accused, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj, P. Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde, were senior members of the banned terrorist organisation, CPI (Maoist). They were actively supporting and propagating the banned outfit’s unlawful activities to overthrow the government established by law, the police said.

“The CPI (Maoist) is undertaking special efforts to build the party among the Dalit masses. They try to rally the Dalit masses extensively by taking up struggles for their self-respect and against discrimination, oppression, degradation and physical attacks by the upper caste feudal forces in order to achieve their motive,” the police said in the affidavit.

“The Elgar Parishad meeting held on December 31, 2017, during which Ferreira and the other accused gave ‘inflammatory, provocative and rebellious’ speeches, saw significant participation of Dalit organisations,” they said. “These Dalit organisations were systematically brought together by some active members of CPI (Maoist), which had also funded this meeting,” the affidavit said.

The police claimed Mr Ferreira and Mr Gonsalves were senior cadres of CPI (Maoist) and engaged in recruiting cadres for the outfit. “The intention of Ferreira and other accused persons along with CPI (Maoist) is to topple democratically elected governments by violent means, that is by creating mayhem, spreading terror and hatred,” the affidavit stated.

“The objective is to assassinate important public functionaries and strike terror in the public,” it said. Mr Ferreira and other accused distributed pamphlets and booklets with an intention to incite, abet and promote enmity between different groups on the ground of religion, caste and community, it said.