Bhima-Koregaon violence: Arrested lawyer Surendra Gadling sent to 8-day police custody; Naxal links under probe

A day after advocate Surendra Gadling, one of the five people who allegedly incited hate in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case , was arrested on Wednesday from Nagpur, Pune Joint Police Commissioner Ravindra Kadam said he was produced before the court and will be held in police custody for eight days.

Among the accused registered in FIR on 8 Jan, some were previously booked for having links with naxals. We were investigating their links & in this connection, we raided houses of some of them: Ravindra Kadam, Joint Police Commissioner, Pune on arrests made in #BhimaKoregaon case pic.twitter.com/1fLUQNxlK2

— ANI (@ANI) June 7, 2018

The other four accused — activists Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen and Mahesh Raut — will be produced before the court on Thursday afternoon. Addressing a press conference, Kadam said the authorities were investigating Wilson and Gadling’s links with Naxals as well. “From Rona Wilson’s house, we recovered a pen drive, a hard disk and some other documents which were sent to forensics,”  ANI quoted him as saying. Kadam also said that letter recovered from Wilson’s house had references to Elgar Parishad, the name of the programme held at Shaniawarwada fort on 1 January. “Letter on funding has references to Elgar Parishad. Many organisations were involved in organising Elgar Parishad but not all have links with Maoists. Sudhir Dhawale’s name has also appeared,”  ANI quoted him as saying. [caption id=“attachment_4286751” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Geeta Desai/101 Reporters[/caption] “Among the accused registered in the FIR on 8 January, some were previously booked for having links with Naxals,” Kadam informed, adding that the police raided houses of some of the other accused as well. Police teams raided the homes of other activists like Shoma Sen in Nagpur, and Mahesh Raut in Mumbai, IANS said. On Tuesday, the aforementioned five people were arrested from Mumbai, Nagpur, and Delhi, by the Pune Police in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence in January. All the five have been arrested for allegedly spreading controversial pamphlets and delivering hate speech under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Last month, the Maharashtra Police carried out multi-city raids against prominent Dalit activists and supporters in a fallout of the 1 January caste riots in Bhima-Koregaon. The raids were carried out by several teams of the Pune Police in Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur, in the homes and offices of various Dalit activists. On 1 January, violence had erupted at an event meant to mark the 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle in which British forces defeated the Peshwa army on January 1, 1818. The violence led to the death of one person and injuries to several others, including 10 policemen. With inputs from agencies