Police using 'mantra of national security' to frame Bharadwaj: Lawyer

The lawyer of activist Sudha Bharadwaj told the Bombay High Court on Friday that the Pune police was relying on the "mantra of national security" as it had no real case of Maoist links against her.

Justice Sarang Kotwal was hearing the bail applications of Bharadwaj and some other activists arrested in the Elgar Parishad case.

Bharadwaj's counsel Yug Chaudhary said the entire case against his client was based on some typed documents, which the police allegedly seized from the computers and laptops of some of the co-accused.

These documents failed to link Bharadwaj to the case, he said.

"The police is working on the belief that if it chants the mantra of national security loud enough, the court will shut its mind and rubber-stamp the evidence," Chaudhary said.

One of the documents cited in the chargesheet was the minutes of a meeting held at Nagpur on January 2, 2018, he said.

According to the minutes, Bharadwaj and co-accused Shoma Sen were part of this meeting of the Maoist cadre, where they allegedly discussed "imparting training on setting up booby traps, making bombs", Chaudhary said.

However, the call details of Sen and Bharadwaj, placed on record by the police, showed the former was in Mumbai while the latter was in Faridabad on that date, he added.

According to the police, the Elgar Parishad, a conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, was backed by Maoists and the "inflammatory" speeches made there triggered caste violence at the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial the next day.

During its investigation, the police arrested several Left-leaning activists for their alleged Maoist connection.

Bharadwaj has been in prison for a year now.

In February, another bench of the high court had reserved its verdict on the bail pleas of the accused after hearing the arguments.

The bench did not pronounce the verdict and instead, recused itself from the case. The bail pleas are now being heard afresh by Justice Kotwal.