A huge jolt and a shock to the urban naxals as the Bombay High Court has termed the Bhima-Koregaon violence an innate conspiracy. This must have definitely come as a shot in the arms for the Pune police. The Court made this observation while hearing a petition for quashing FIR filed by Professor Anand Teltumbde from Goa. The Court dismissed the petition while making a certain important observation. Teltumbde happens to be one of the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case. In the application for quashing the FIR, Prof. Anand Teltumbde denied all the charges made against him by the police. The Court observed that the offense in the case at hand is very serious. Moreover, the conspiracy is deep rooted and has extremely serious repercussions.
The Bombay HC opined that the investigating agency must be given sufficient opportunity to collect all evidence. Evidence which could not be revealed in the affidavit since an investigation is in the process were presented in a sealed envelope for the perusal of the Court. The Court welcomed the fact that such material evidence was provided in a sealed envelope to the Court. The HC also made it clear that the court was satisfied at this stage given that there is sufficient evidence against the petitioner. The Court has also observed that the investigation into this case has more scope. Now, the scope of investigation also includes the activities leading to the incident and what transpired thereafter. The judges agreed that the case is no longer restricted to the Bhima-Koregaon incident, it is way beyond it.
One of the investigating officers has quoted that the accused persons were active members of the banned terror organisation CPI (Maoist). Apart from this, the prosecution relied on several letters discovered from the laptop seized from one of the accused. Interestingly, some of the letters mentioned Comrade Anand and another one had the mention of Anand T. The prosecution also relied upon a letter drafted on April 6, 2018, which contained exhortations to the intellectual comrades to keep the fire burning. Contents of another letter create suspicion that money from banned terror organisation was received by Anand T. A total of five letters allegedly written by the accused to each other were produced before the Court. On the basis of the materials produced by the prosecution, the Court said that it was satisfied that the investigating agency has some material to establish the identity of the accused.
An important observation made by the Court is that the allegations against the petitioner went beyond merely being a member of the banned organisation. The material placed by the investigating agency suggested an active role and participation of the petitioner. The argument of the petitioner’s counsel that the letters cannot be conclusively said to refer to the petitioner was rejected by the HC. The Court while stating that it was satisfied with the investigating agency, made it clear that the allegations against the petitioner were not “baseless”. And hence, there was no occasion to quash the FIR filed against him.
This HC decision must have come as a major shock for the urban Maoists and the entire left-liberal ecosystem. The urban Maoists and their supporters had been continuously targeting the government over the legal proceedings in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case. The observations made by the HC go on to corroborate a sinister conspiracy in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence. The scope of the investigation has also been broadened and the Court has also pointed out that the offense involved is serious and the conspiracy among the accused had “extremely serious repercussions”. These observations by the Court have to a large extent cleared the air around the action which has been taken against those accused of having been involved in the Bhima-Koregaon violence.