Judge AT Wankhede said, “the allegations made against the accused are of serious nature. It is alleged that the accused is having connections with banned outfit CPI Maoist.”
Special public prosecutor Prakash Shetty representing NIA said Babu has to be confronted with various facts established or revealed during investigation from the other arrested accused for investigation purpose.
The NIA remand application says that the accused has association with CPI (Maoist) party. During investigation, various letters were recovered from the seized electronic articles, wherein the role of accused transpired.” He further argued that the accused needs to be probed about material found from other co-accused and sought his custody for 10 days.
Babu was summoned by NIA in Delhi on July 12 evening to appear before them on July 15 in Mumbai. He had faced a raid by the Maharashtra Police in September 2019 where electronic devices and books in his possession were confiscated by the police.
The agency took up the investigation from Pune Police on January 24, 2020 and then arrested Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha, who are also in their custody.However other accused, Prof Shoma Sen and Sudha Bharadwaj are lodged at Byculla jail and Mahesh Raut, Vernon Gonsalves, Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Arun Ferreira, Sudhir Dhawale are at Taloja Central jail and Varavara Rao is at Nanavati Hospital.
They have all been booked for allegedly delivering inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad conclave held at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31, 2017 which triggered violence at Bhima-Koregaonwar memorial the next day.