CPI (Maoist) misguiding Dalit movement: Pune cops

The outlawed CPI (Maoist) is trying to misguide the Dalit movement in India, according to investigations conducted by the Pune police.

The CPI (Maoist) want to infuse Naxal idology into Dalit youths and draw them into violence, the police has found during the investigations into the 31 December 2017 Elgar Parishad at Shanivarwada in Pune and the subsequent 1 January 2018 Koregaon Bhima caste riots. This aspect finds mention in the remand note presented before special judge KD Vadane, who presides over a UAPA court at Shivajinagar in Pune.

According to police, Maoist cadres are giving inflammatory speeches in several districts across the state.

The remand note speaks about the activites of the human rights activists and civil righyts defenders under arrest since 6 June - Surendra Gadling, Prof Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale and Mahesh Raut and those under arrest/house arrest since 28 August - P Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira.

While seeking the remand of Gonsalves and Ferreira, the Pune police said that they need to investigate the sources of the funds and for what activities the monies were being used by the two accused for the CPI(Maoist).

They said Gonsalves was in regular contact with another co-accused in the case, Sudhir Dhawale and wanted to probe what were the reasons for this, examine electronic devices in their (Gonsalves-Ferreira) presence, probe their financial and bank dealings, incriminating documents, emails, their social media accounts on Facebook, and call data records.

The Pune police claimed that they harboured links with Maoist and Kashmiri terror groups, were allegedly hatching a conspiracy to carry out an assassination in a 'Rajiv Gandhi-style operation', procuring arms and ammunition, seeking to incite disturbances and violence in the country to topple the democratically-elected government.