Elgar Parishad: Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale get released
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Mumbai: In the Elgar Parishad case, accused activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale were released from jail on Friday. The release was after more than two weeks of Bombay High Court granting both bail. The duo were arrested in 2018 over alleged inflammatory speeches at an Elgar Parishad event in Maharashtra’s Pune on December 31, 2017. The speeches allegedly triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima in Pune the very next day.
According to police claims, the event was backed by Maoists and the case was later transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Among the 16 persons arrested in the case then, many are out on bail now, Hindustan Times reported.
The court noted that the released duo had been in jail for a long time, and the trial on the case does not seem to end anytime soon. Thus, the court released them. The trial will not be made soon since the case has more than 300 witnesses, the court said and added that at the current stage, the court is not dealing with the merits of the case.
Advocates of Wilson and Dhawale had argued that the two have been languishing in jail since 2018, and the special court has yet to frame charges against them. The court granted them bail and directed them to submit a surety of Rs 1 lakh each and appear before the special NIA court for the trial hearing.
As per the accusations against the two, Wilson is described as ‘one of the top brass’ of ‘urban Maoists,’ and Dhawale is an active member of the proscribed Communist Party of India (Maoist), HT reports.