Chargesheet filed by NIA against 8 people in Bhima Koregaon case

 

 

 

THE National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against eight people, including activists Gautam Navlakha and 82-year-old Father Stan Swamy, for their alleged involvement in inciting a mob to violence in Bhima Koregaon near Pune on January 1, 2018, officials said.

 

Swamy, who said he has never been to Bhima Koregaon, was arrested from his home in Ranchi on Thursday evening and brought to Mumbai where he was produced before a court on Friday and remanded to judicial custody till October 23.

He is possibly the oldest person to be charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), officials said.

Barring one person – Milind Teltumde who is absconding – all other named in the chargesheet for allegedly conspiring against the Government are in judicial custody.

 

Besides Navlakha and Swamy, the others named in the chargesheet are Delhi University associate professor Hany Babu, Goa Institute of Management professor Anand Teltumbde, and Jyoti Jagtap, Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, activists of the Bhima-Koregaon Shaurya Din Prerna Abhiyaan group. They were arrested during the course of the investigation into the violence on January 1, 2018 in which one person was killed and several injured after clashes at the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Koregaon near Pune.

 

Navlakha and Teltumbde had surrendered before the NIA in April this year.

 

The NIA chargesheet filed against the eight does not mention human rights activist Sudha Bharadwaj, who has been in jail since 2018. She was arrested by Pune Police in the case along with Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in August 2018.