Mumbai: At the end of 2018, when the Pune police first filed a chargesheet in the Elgar Parishad case, they claimed to be “heavily relying” on the investigation conducted in the case involving former Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba. By then, Saibaba and five others had already been convicted by the Gadchiroli sessions court.
The Pune police, at multiple places in the Elgar Parishad chargesheet, claimed that some of those arrested in the Elgar Parishad case had a “direct association” with Saibaba. They focused on the Gadchiroli court’s life punishment granted to Saibaba to build their case against the human rights defenders arrested in the Elgar Parishad case. The Pune police’s chargesheet was later adopted as-is by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which took over the case in early 2020.
Now that the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court has acquitted Saibaba and five others of all charges (not once but twice) and the Maharashtra state government failed to secure a stay on acquittal both in the high court and in the Supreme Court, the role of the state police needs to be closely examined. More so, because besides the police’s attempt to drag Saibaba into the Elgar Parishad case, the investigating officer Suhas Bawche in the Saibaba case also plays a substantial role in the investigation of the Elgar Parishad case.
In the 293-page judgement delivered by the division bench of Justices Vinay G. Joshi and Valimiki S. Menezes of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court, along with the technical lapses, the judges had specifically raised suspicion over the investigation conducted by investigating officer Bawche.
Bawche, who was Sub-divisional Police Officer (SDPO) at Aheri in Gadchiroli district at that time, had led the investigation in Saibaba’s case. His claim was that Saibaba and five others – Prashant Rahi, Mahesh Tikri, Hem Keshwdatta Mishra, Pandu Narote and Vijay Nan Tikri – were a part of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, a frontal organisation of the banned CPI (Maoist) group.
These claims, now proved baseless, were based on the police and panch witnesses’ statements that the high court has now raised serious questions about.
The defence lawyers had contested that Mishra, one of the six persons who faced a decade-long incarceration in the case, was arrested two days before he was actually shown arrested on August 22, 2013. The police claimed that Mishra, along with Tikri and Narote, was apprehended from a “secluded place” near Aheri bus stop around 6 pm. The prosecution witnesses, all comprising policemen and panchas, had claimed that from the time of spotting them at the bus stop to seizing “evidences” and summoning witnesses before whom the seizures were conducted, the process took less than an hour and half.
The first panch witness, one Santosh Bawne, was a “stock witness” who regularly appeared as a witness for the police. Bawne, who had no formal education and no knowledge of electronic devices, was made to stand as witness to the seizures of electronic evidence. Bawne claimed to reached the police station within 5-10 minutes after being summoned. This, the court has raised doubts about, considering he was at a different location. Interestingly, Bawne had claimed that he was summoned to the police station by one Narendra Dube, a station diary duty incharge constable. But Dube had denied having summoned Bawne to the police station.
The judges have also pointed to the chain of events that start around 6:15 pm at the bus stop. “We have seen the chain of events that at 06.15 p.m., the accused were for first time accosted near Aheri Bus-stand. It would certainly take a few minutes to interact and then, further, some more time would be required to bring them to the Police Station… In substance, from the first interaction with accused at 06.15 p.m., all preliminary steps were taken within just 15 minutes and then seizure panchnama has commenced, which is improbable and requires to be noted,” the judgment reads.
The defence lawyers had accused the police of presenting an antedated FIR and adding dates and other details later to suit their narrative. The court took note of the different colour inks used in the FIR. “We may hasten to add that copy of FIR (Exh. 221) is a carbon copy on which the time is mentioned in blue ink, whilst the time and general diary reference is in black ink. We do not find any explanation coming forth in this regard from the prosecution to remove this doubt,” the judges write.
The defence lawyers had accused Bawche and his team of “manipulating the police record and fabricating incriminating material”. The court took note of the condition of the case diary and how the police had resorted to recording entries on loose papers. Case diaries are an important piece of evidence in criminal trials. Police have to record every move in the case diary and these entries made in the case diary prove to be a crucial piece of evidence at the time of trials. In this case, however, the police had failed to follow the procedural mandate and the defence’s claim that the papers were intentionally kept in loose paper form so as to replace them to suit the police’s story was accepted by the court.
Similar questions were also raised about the police’s claim around Rahi and Vijay Tikri’s arrests and “incriminating documents” seized from them. According to the police, Rahi, a journalist, and Tikri were taken into custody from one Chichgarh T-point on the evening of September 1, 2013. The arrest panchnamas, however, don’t mention the time. Similarly, the evidence allegedly recovered from them was seized only a day later. This The court has blamed Bawche for not providing any clarity and for keeping the documents ambiguous.
Although Saibaba was arrested on May 9, 2014, his house in Delhi was raided almost seven months before that, on September 12, 2013. Bawche in his testimony before the trial court, had claimed that when they had tried to arrest Saibaba, his “party members” had tried to create a “law and order” situation in the capital city. The high court rubbished these claims.
Bawche continues to be celebrated for leading many investigations in the Gadchiroli region. After a “successful conviction” in Saibaba’s case, then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had publicly applauded him for his work.
Bawche, now a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in Mumbai, however, is not new to controversy. In 2017, when human rights advocate Surendra Gadling was representing Saibaba in the case, he was allegedly threatened by Bawche of dire consequences right inside the court. According to an affidavit submitted by Gadling’s then junior advocate Jagdish Meshram, Bawche after his deposition in the Gadchiroli court, had told Gadling “after Saibaba, it is your turn to go to jail”. Meshram’s affidavit also mentions names of other lawyers who were present at that time.
This allegation makes sense when seen in the context of the arrests made in the Elgar Parishad case in 2018. Although Bawche did not have any direct role in the investigation, he was present at the times of raids and arrests that were carried out across India in 2018. Bawche had led the raid at Gadling’s residence in Nagpur. Similarly, the initial chargesheet filed by the Pune police has mention of letters sent by Bawche to different state police before the raids carried out at Telugu poet Varavara Roa’s residence in Hyderabad and academic and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj’s residence in Delhi.
Interestingly, defence lawyers recall Bawche’s presence in the Supreme Court at the time of the hearing in historian Romila Thapar’s petition against the first round of arrests made in the Elgar Parishad case in 2018. Later, in 2019, when the Fadnavis-led BJP government fell in Mahrashtra and the Mahavikas Aghadi government took charge, a delegation of human rights activists and lawyers had visited Ajit Pawar, the then deputy chief minister. Here too, Bawche was present to apprise the state about the goings-on in the case.
