After senior NCP leader Jitendra Awhad exhorted Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray to drop charges against accused Urban Naxals in Bhima Koregaon violence case, now the party supremo Sharad Pawar has demanded a fresh probe on Bhima Koregaon violence case.
#Breaking | NCP chief @PawarSpeaks seeks fresh probe on Bhima Koregaon violence case.
‘We’ll ask CM @OfficeOfUT to form a Special Investigation Team to probe the matter’, says Sharad Pawar.
TIMES NOW’s Kajal Iyer with details. pic.twitter.com/0aH9QZbKHa
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) December 21, 2019
Casting aspersions on the investigative agencies’ role in the Bhima Koregaon case, Sharad Pawar said, “We will ask CM Uddhav Thackeray to form a Special Investigation Team to probe the matter.”
The five suspected ‘Urban Naxals’, identified as Delhi based activist Rona Wilson, advocate Surendra Gadling, professor Shoma Sen and Mahesh Raut from Nagpur and Mumbai’s Sudhir Dhavle were arrested by the Pune police on 6 June 2018, over charges of organising the Elgaar Parishad held at Pune’s Shaniwarwada on 31 December 2017, which is believed to have instigated the Bhima-Koregaon violence a day later.
The NCP led by Sharad Pawar has always sided with the ‘Urban Naxals’, referring to them as ‘activists’ and not accused. Earlier, after the formation of Maha Vikas Aghadi government in the state, senior NCP leader Dr Jitendra Awhad had urged CM Thackeray to release Bhima Koregaon violence accused as they were, according to him, falsely incriminated.
Pawar too had sided with the ‘Urban Naxals’ from the start. He had filed an affidavit with the Bhima Koregaon Commission holding the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra Government responsible for the violence and giving a clean chit to the ‘Urban Naxals’.
“It is not possible for anti-social elements with a strong political vendetta to come together at such a large number at Bhima Koregaon without the failure of the law-enforcing agency. Hence the state has to own up responsibility for a failed law-and-order situation on January 1, 2018,” Pawar said in the affidavit.
It is noteworthy to mention that the Pune Sessions Court had recently rejected the bail application of all the nine alleged ‘Urban Naxals’ namely, Surendra Gadling, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut and Rona Wilson, accused of instigating the Bhima-Koregaon violence that took place on 1st January 2018 in Pune.
