Stan Swamy case: ‘Never recovered straw, sipper or sought 20 days’ says NIA

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday disparaged reports claiming that it sought 20 days’ time from the court to respond to Father Stan Swamy’s plea to allow him a straw and sipper in Taloja Central Jail as he cannot hold a glass because he has Parkinson’s disease.

The agency also said that it never recovered any straw and sipper from him, so there was no question of the agency holding onto it. It termed all such claims as “false, incorrect and mischievous”.

In an official response, the NIA spokesperson said, “Accused Stan Swamy filed an application on November 6 in the NIA court at Mumbai to get back his straw and sipper which he alleged had been kept by NIA. The court asked the agency to file its reply on the next date, which was scheduled on November 26 (Thursday). NIA never sought any time as such, and to say that NIA sought 20 days time is false, incorrect and mischievous.”

The agency added, “NIA duly filed its reply in the court on Thursday stating therein that NIA had searched Stan Swamy’s in the presence of independent witnesses and no such straw and sipper were found.”

“The court rejected Swamy’s application and ordered the jail authorities to provide him a straw and sipper,” the spokesperson said.

Swamy, 83, was arrested in the first week of October by the agency in the Bhima-Koregaon conspiracy case of 2018.

The central anti-terror probe agency has claimed in its charge sheet, filed last month itself, that Swamy had received “Rs8 lakh from one comrade Mohan to spread the activities of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)”.

Several documents recovered from his place, which have been added to the NIA charge sheet, include “an underground handbook, letters between cadres, a mini-manual of urban guerilla warfare, the constitution of CPI (Maoist), documents related to the status of People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, documents on strategy and tactics”. One of the letters seized from him stated that Maoists were keeping an eye on the strategy of the Ministry of Home Affairs pertaining to operations against them, according to the NIA charge sheet.

While Swamy’s lawyers have claimed in the court that Swamy is a member of the organisation Persecuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee (PPSC), which works with prisoners under trial, NIA has argued that PPSC is a “frontal organisation” for CPI (Maoist).