Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Friday extended till January 10, the interim protection from arrest granted to activist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Elgar Parishad case.
A bench of Justices B.P. Dharmadhikari and Sarang Kotwal also restrained the police from arresting activist and co-accused Anand Teltumbde till December 17. The bench said it would hear in detail the arguments on Telt-umbde’s petition seeking quashing of the FIR. The court, however, refused to grant any interim relief to activist Stan Swamy who too has been named in the FIR but is yet to be arrested.
The Pune police, whi-ch is probing the case, informed the court that Swamy was still being treated as a “suspect” and not an accused. The judges said in that case he could not be granted any protection. Navlakha, Teltumbde and Swamy have moved the high court seeking that the FIR against them be quashed. Navlakha was arrested in August this year along with Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, all left-wing activists.
The police alleged that they had links with Maoists who had backed the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017. Inflammatory speeches at the conclave led to violence at the Bhima Koregaon war memorial in Pune district the next day, the police claimed.
