Koregaon-Bhima chargesheet: Activists conspired to kill PM, topple government

The Pune Police filed its first chargesheet against 10 prime accused in the Koregaon-Bhima caste riots case of January 1 2018, charging them, among others, with conspiring to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi and overthrow the democratically elected government with violent means.

The accused activists are: Sudhir P. Dhawale, Rona J. Wilson, Surendra P. Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh S. Raut -- all arrested from different parts of the country on June 6 and currently in judicial custody.

Besides, there are other absconding accused: Milind Teltumbde, Ritupan Goswami, Prashanto Bose, comrades Manglu and Dipu, all described as having gone 'underground' in various parts of the country.

All the accused are charged under provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activists (Prevention) Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code, in the 20-page chargesheet filed before a Pune Special Court this evening, through ACP Shivaji P. Pawar of Swargate Division.

The detailed primary chargesheet comes in the ongoing investigations into the Elgar Parishad organized by the Kabir Kala Manch in Pune on December 31, 2017, and the subsequent caste riots which erupted in Koregaon-Bhima on New Year Day.

The 10 accused chargesheeted today are among several other activists-accused nabbed in the same case probed by the Pune Police, including Shubha Bharadwaj, Vernon S. Gonsalves, Arun T. Ferreira, Gautma Navlakha, and P. Varavara Rao in August.

Besides the Koregaon-Bhima violence, the chargesheet said that the 10 accused had links with various Maoist and Kashmir terror groups, they were hatching a conspiracy to execute a high-level political assassination, procuring illegal funds, arms and ammunition, seeking to incite disturbances and violence among people and communities around the country to topple the democratically elected government.

"Shoma Sena and Prashanto Bose, secretary of the outlawed CPI (Maoist)'s Eastern Regional Bureau, along with other underground activists hatched a conspiracy to kill the Prime Minister of India. All the five (arrested) accused conspired to wage a war against the nation with bombs and arms to topple the government with violent means," says the chargesheet.

During the raids carried out on the homes and offices of the five (arrested) accused and other activists during the past 10 months, the police said they have recovered laptops, computers, hard-disks, pen-drives, mobiles, memory cards, letters, documents, photographs, details of their social media accounts, emails, their meetings and discussions, besides other inflammatory literature from them.

Raut also gave Rs 500,000 each to the remaining four accused, the money was illegally acquired from the CPI (Maoist) to keep the Koregaon-Bhima passions alive.

He also recruited two students of Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) who were sent for guerilla warfare training in the forests in Maoist heartlands, as revealed in the communication between Wilson and Goswami, said the charge-sheet.

The police have also named various frontal or connected frontal organisations like Kabir Kala Manch, CPI (Maoist), Indian Association of Peoples Lawyers, Anuradha Ghandi Memorial Committee, to propagate or carry out its plans.

--IANS

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