Mumbai: A week after the Elgar Parishad case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the agency has moved an application before a special court in Pune seeking transfer of the case to the special NIA court in Mumbai.
The probe agency submitted the application on Wednesday. According to a defence lawyer, the special judge S.R. Navandar has posted this application for hearing on Monday.
The National Investigation Agency, in its plea, has requested the court to transfer all the records and the case proceedings to the special NIA court in Mumbai.
According to the defence lawyer, the central probe agency’s application indicated that a fresh FIR has been registered by the NIA on January 27.
Earlier this week, an attempt by NIA officials to get documents pertaining to the case failed as the local police refused to hand them over documents until they get orders from Director General of Police (DGP), Maharashtra.
According to sources, a team of NIA officials, comprising a Superintendent of Police-rank officer, had met Pune police officials and informed them that the investigation into the Elgar Parishad case has been handed over to the agency.
The city police, however, had told them that the case-related documents would be handed over to them only after they received orders from the Maharashtra DGP office to that effect.
The Pune police has claimed that the speeches delivered at the Elgar Parishad conclave, held at Shaniwarwada in Pune city on December 31, 2017, led to the violence at Koregaon Bhima in the district the next day.
They have also claimed that the conclave was organised by the people having Maoist links. During the probe into the violence, police had arrested human rights activists Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Shoma Sen, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Varavara Rao for alleged Maoist links.
They were booked under the relevant sections of the IPC and also the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The ‘Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi’ government of Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress has slammed the Centre for handing over the probe to the National Investigation Agency.
Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had condemned the Centre’s decision to transfer the case to the NIA without the consent of the state government and termed the move as “unconstitutional”.
The opposition BJP had, however, welcomed the move.
