Mumbai: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken sou motu cognisance of the arrests of the five activists in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence case by the Pune police. It has has issued a notice to the Maharashtra government and the Maharashtra Director General of Police in the arrests issue.
The Maharashtra police arrested Sudha Bhardwaj, lawyer and activists for tribal rights, Gautam Navlakha, columnist and human right activist, poet Varavara Rao and lawyers Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira.
In its notice, the human rights commission has said that Maharashtra police failed to follow the standard operating procedure in these arrests. According to NHRC, it may amount to violation of human rights. In its notice, the NHRC has asked the chief secretary of Maharashtra as well as the DGP of police to send a factual report within a month.
NHRC has also mentioned that it had received complaints from human rights organisations from Geneva in June this year following the arrests of five human rights activists. At that time, in the same case, the Pune police had arrested lawyer Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sena, Sudhir Dhavale and Mahesh Raut. NHRC had sent a similar notice to the DGP at that time also.
Meanwhile, the decision of a transit remand for Ms Bhardwaj is pending before the Faridabad chief magistrate. Her lawyer has argued that the state government’s act of holding her for her political ideology, which is adverse to the state’s political party, is harassing her. She also told the court that the FIR in this case did not even name her and that she had nothing to do with the incident as she has never supported violence of any kind.
