Seven persons accused in the Elgar Parishad case have gone on a hunger strike from Friday, October 18, protesting that they are not physically produced for the trial. The special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court has been conducting the trial in this case. The Elgar Parishad case is related to alleged inflammatory speeches made at a conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which, the police claimed, triggered violence the next day near the Bhima Koregaon war memorial located on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city. The police had claimed the conclave was organised by people with alleged Maoist links.
The accused activists in the case – Sagar Gorakhe, Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Hanny Babu, Rona Wilson, Ramesh Gaichor, and Mahesh Raut – said that the police is deliberately not producing them in court and launched a hunger strike. All of them are currently lodged in Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai.
Police arrested several persons in the case, including Dalit activist and co-organiser of the Elgar Parishad event Sudhir Dhawale, Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen, human rights activist Rona Wilson under the UAPA. Seven persons have so far been released on bail – Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Vernon Gonsalves, and Arun Ferreira. Father Stan Swamy, another accused in the case, had died at a private hospital in Mumbai on July 5, 2021 while awaiting medical bail.