Three activists sent back home from Pune, kept under house arrest

Pune/Mumbai, August 30

The Pune police sent the three Left-wing activists, arrested for their alleged links with Maoists, to their homes, as per a directive of the Supreme Court.

Arrangements were made to send the three suspects to their respective cities late last night and all of them have reached their homes, said Pune’s Assistant Commissioner of Police Shivaji Pawar, who is the investigation officer in the case.

The three activists will be kept under “house arrest”, he said.

“We have our own police officers and personnel along with the local police from the respective cities, who will be deployed at their residences,” he added.

Left leaning Telugu poet and writer Varavara Rao reached home in Hyderabad this morning, while activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, were sent to Mumbai by road, a police official said today.

Gonsalves reached his home in Mumbai’s Andheri suburb around 7.30 am.

His wife, advocate Susan Abraham, said, “Vernon reached home safely and we welcomed him.”  “We have requested the police not to block the entire road of our housing society which may scare other people living in the building,” she added.

Ferriera was taken to his home in Charai area of the neighbouring Thane district, an official said.

The Supreme Court had ordered yesterday that the five human rights activists — Rao, Ferreira, Gonzalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navalakha — arrested in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence case would be kept under house arrest at their homes till September 6, observing that dissent was the “safety valve” of democracy.

Following the apex court’s order, a court here directed the Pune police to send Rao, Gonsalves and Ferreira back to their homes.

While trade unionist and lawyer Bharadwaj is confined to her home in Faridabad and civil liberties activist Navalakha to his Delhi residence, Rao, Gonsalves and Ferreira were brought to Pune on Tuesday night.

The Pune police had on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested five of them — Rao in Hyderabad, Gonsalves and Ferreira in Mumbai, Bharadwaj in Faridabad and Navalakha in Delhi.

The raids were carried out as part of a probe into a conclave—Elgar Parishad—held in Koregaon-Bhima near here on December 31 last year, which had allegedly triggered violence the next day.

“The arrested activists were part of a conspiracy to target higher political functionaries,” Joint Commissioner of Pune Police Shivajirao Bodkhe earlier said, without elaborating. PTI