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Elgar Parishad case: CPI (M) in Uapa cross-fire during defence argument
On the fourth day of her argument against granting bail to the activists and lawyers accused in Elgar Parishad case, district government pleader (DGP) Ujjwala Pawar said they were working towards furthering the agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)
On the fourth day of her argument against granting bail to the activists and lawyers accused in Elgar Parishad case, district government pleader (DGP) Ujjwala Pawar said they were working towards furthering the agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). She was arguing in the court of Additional Sessions Judge S Navandar on Wednesday.
Advocate Parth Shah, representing accused Vara Vara Rao, claimed that the documents that DGP Pawar based her arguments on were available in the public domain and accessible to anyone.
Pawar started her argument on the final day with a 2009 notification by the ministry of home affairs (MHA) declaring CPI(M) as a terrorist organisation under the schedule of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (Uapa). She claimed that the notification is named “in the Schedule of Terrorist Organisations, along with all its formations and front organisations under the existing Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967.”
Shah told the judge that none of the organisations mentioned by DGP Pawar were notified as frontal organisation of CPI(M). The organisations include Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), Indian Association for People’s Lawyers (IAPL), Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committee, among others.
“To declare them as frontal organisations, a notification of the government has to be issued. Which is not the case here,” said Shah. The accused have had connection with the mentioned organisations, according to DGP Pawar.
The accused, including Shoma Sen, Sudha Bharadwaj, Rona Wilson, Vernon Gonsalves, Vara Vara Rao, Surendra Gadling, Arun Ferriera, Mahesh Raut and Sudhir Dhawale, were therefore active members of the banned organisation, said DGP Pawar.
She presented a PDF (portable document format) version of a booked titled Strategy and Tactics of Indian Revolution seized from Rao’s electronic devices during his arrest in 2018.
The document relied upon by the prosecution in the Elgar Parishad case is in the public domain, Shah said.
Another document cited by DGP Pawar included a booked written allegedly by Dhawale who was booked and later acquitted in another case under Uapa. His lawyer, Siddharth Patil, claimed that the Uapa charge against Dhawale in that case also involved the said book and he was acquitted by a Sessions Court in Gondia.
