Pune Police arrests renowned scholar Anand Teltumbde for alleged Elgar Parishad-Maoist links

Pune Police has arrested renowned scholar Anand Teltumbde for alleged Elgar Parishad-Maoist links. According to early reports, Teltumbde was arrested from Mumbai airport around 3:30 am on Saturday. The arrest comes a day after the Pune Session Court rejected Teltumbde’s bail plea in the case. There are reports that Teltumbde was granted four weeks protection from arrest by the Supreme Court. The top court had given him the period to secure bail from lower court.

The Indian Institute Management alumnus is one of the accused in the in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case. On Friday, Additional sessions judge Kishor Vadane observed that an investigating officer has collected sufficient material against Teltumbde.

"In my view, there is sufficient material collected by the investigating officer to show the involvement of the present accused in the alleged commission of the offence," the judge observed.

The investigation was at a crucial stage and custodial interrogation of the accused was necessary, the court held.

The prosecution Thursday had submitted an envelope containing "evidence", claiming that it proves Teltumbde's involvement in Maoist activities.

Teltumbde filed the anticipatory (pre-arrest) bail application before the Pune court after the Supreme Court rejected his plea seeking to quash the FIR against him in the Elgar Parishad case.

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.  

(With agency inputs)