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NIA plea for transfer of Elgar case: Court grants state, defence lawyers time till Feb 6 to file say
PUNE A special Uapa court on Monday granted time till February 6 to the state prosecution and defence lawyers to file their say on the application filed by the NIA
PUNE A special Uapa court on Monday granted time till February 6 to the state prosecution and defence lawyers to file their say on the application filed by the NIA to transfer the Elgar Parishad case to the NIA court in Mumbai.
The Pune Police, as well as the accused in the Elgar Parishad case, have sought time from the Pune special court to file a response to the application filed by National Investigation Agency (NIA), seeking a transfer of the case papers.
The application, submitted by NIA last week, has not yet been served to the defence lawyers of the nine accused, nor the Pune police, according to a statement in court on Monday.
The NIA has sought the intervention of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (Uapa) court, of additional sessions Judge SR Navander, to have the the case transferred to a special NIA court in Mumbai.
“I need more time to file a say in the matter. I cannot file a say without the instructions of my IO (investigating officer). The investigating officer has gone to the DG’s (director general) office and is awaiting further instructions,” said Pune district government pleader, Ujwala Pawar, who is representing the Pune Police.
The NIA lawyer at the proceeedings in Pune, who refused to reveal his name, said, “My question is very limited. Please send it (the case) to special NIA court.”
One of the defence lawyers, advocate Gaurav Jachak said, “We have not received a copy of the NIA application. We were told that applications are being sent to the accused directly in jail, but that has not happened either.”
“We learned about this on Saturday (last week), when we visited the accused in jail, that they have not been provided with the copies,” said advocate Bikram Kumar, another defence lawyer.
The NIA have registered an FIR under Sections 153(a), 505(a)(b), 117 and 34 of Indian Penal Code along with Sections13, 16, 18, 18b, 20, 39 of UAPA against Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Rona WIlson, Surendra Gadling, VV Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferriera, Vernon Gonsalves and Anand Teltumbde.
“The offence occurred in Pune, Maharashtra and the NIA special court, Mumbai, has the territorial jurisdiction under NIa Act, 2009 to conduct the trial of scheduled offences investigated by NIA,” reads a part of the application.
The Pune Police, meanwhile, handed over another hard disk prepared by the forensic science laboratory (FSL) to the accused. This is the fifth such hard disk to be submitted to the accused, all of whom are all lodged in the Yerawada Central Jail for the past two years.
