Pune: A Pune Special Court on Saturday sent human rights activists Vernon S. Gonsalves and Arun T. Ferreira to police custody till November 6 for their involvement in the Koregaon-Bhima caste riots on January 1, officials said.
The development came a day after the Special Judge of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act Court, K.D. Vadane, passed a common order on Friday evening declining the bail applications of Sudha Bharadwaj, Gonsalves and Ferreira in the case filed against them by the Vishrambaug police station.
Shortly after their bail pleas were rejected, Gonsalves was arrested from his Pune home and Ferreira from Thane.
They were under ‘house arrest’ for almost two months following A Supreme Court directive.
A police team has proceeded to Faridabad, Haryana, to nab Bharadwaj and she is likely to be brought to Pune soon after completing the relevant formalities.
The duo, along with Bharadwaj and others, are accused in the Elgar Parishad of December 31, 2017, leading to the Koregaon-Bhima caste riots of January 1 this year.
Earlier in June, the Pune Police had nabbed activists Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling and Mahesh Raut in the Koregaon-Bhima case.
Besides the Koregaon-Bhima violence, the police said that the accused harboured links with Maoist and Kashmiri terror groups, were hatching a conspiracy to carry out a high-level political 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. (IANS)
