The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has alleged that activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon caste violence case, had connections with a Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agent arrested in the United States.
The central agency filed an affidavit on Monday before a Division Bench of justices A.S. Gadkari and P.D. Naik in a bail application filed by Mr. Navlakha. On November 19, 2022, he was transferred from Taloja Central Jail to house arrest. Mr. Navlakha had surrendered before the NIA office in Delhi on April 14, 2021, and was taken into judicial custody soon thereafter.
The affidavit claims that Mr. Navlakha had visited the U.S. thrice to speak at the Kashmiri American Council Conference organised by Ghulam Nabi Fai with whom he was in touch regularly. “Ghulam Nabi Fai was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2011 for accepting funds from the ISI and Pakistan government. Navlakha had written a letter to the judge of the U.S. court trying Ghulam Nabi Fai’s case for clemency. Gautam Navlakha was introduced to a Pakistani ISI General for his recruitment by Ghulam Nabi Fai on the direction of the ISI, showing his nexus and complicity with Ghulam Nabi Fai and Pakistani ISI,” the agency alleged.
Mr. Navlakha had deep links with Communist Party of India (Maoist) and he espoused Maoist ideology and anti-government utterances through his various lectures and videos. The objective of these activities was to overthrow the government, it said. Mr. Navlakha was assigned tasks such as uniting intellectuals against government forces and recruitment of cadres for guerrilla activities of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the NIA alleged. He was not merely supporting a banned terror organisation but had an active role in furthering CPI (Maoist) activities, the NIA contended.
On January 1, 1818, a battle was fought between the British Army and Peshwas who were overthrown. To honour their gallantry, a monument ‘Vijay Stambh’ was built. On January 1, 1927, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar visited the site and started an annual tradition to celebrate the occasion. On December 31, 2017, a public meeting was organised called ‘Elgar Parishad’ and the next day many Dalits and Bahujans gathered and were attacked by a mob which resulted in the death of a Maratha youth. On January 2, 2018, a local resident Anita Sawale filed a First Information Report against Hindutva leaders Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide and subsequently 22 FIRs were registered in the case. Most of them are under investigation. Subsequently, Pune police conducted a crackdown and arrested many activists.
