Bhima-Koregaon case: Court orders release of activist Anand Teltumbde

Hours after Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde was arrested by the Pune Police in the Elgar Parishad case for his alleged links with the banned CPI-Maoist, the Pune Sessions Court has ordered his release.

Teltumbde, a professor at Goa Institute of Management, was detained at Mumbai airport on Saturday, a day after a special court in Pune rejected his request for protection from arrest.

On Friday, Additional Sessions Judge Kishor Vadane observed that an investigating officer has collected sufficient material "to show the involvement of the present accused (Teltumbde) in the alleged commission of the offence".

Prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar had argued that some of the correspondence seized by  police revealed that the leaders of the banned CPI (Maoist) comrade Prakash, Milind  (Teltumbde), Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen and Anand Teltumbde were in contact with each other.

"It establishes a larger conspiracy," she had said. Gadling, Wilson and Sen are already arrested.

Defence lawyer Rohan Nahar contended that there was no evidence to show that "comrade Anand" in the alleged correspondence, to which the prosecution had referred, was Teltumbde. But the judge, in the order, said the documents submitted by the prosecution in the envelop "prima facie" reveal that it has some material to show that they were one and the same person.  

According to police, Maoists had supported the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, and the inflammatory speeches there led to violent clashes at the Koregaon Bhima war memorial the next day.