PUNE: Senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and then Pune police commissioner Rashmi Shukla on Friday said it would not be correct to say that the police suppressed one FIR, filed on January 3, 2018, against only two speakers related to the Elgar Parishad and acted proactively on another filed on January 8, 2018, by Tushar Damgude, by adding details to implicate more people.
The first FIR based on Akshay Bikkad’s complaint was related to speeches by Dalit activist Jignesh Mevani and former JNU student Umar Khalid, which was initially taken by the Deccan Gymkhana police and later transferred to the Vishrambaug police.
The second FIR, registered five days later, had resulted in the arrest of several prominent activists from across the country in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case, now pending before a special NIA court in Mumbai.
Shukla, now an additional director-general, south zone of the CRPF in Hyderabad, said, “In one of these FIRs, chargesheet(s) has been filed and the matter is sub-judice. The other FIR (against Mevani, Khalid) is pending before the state for a sanction to prosecute under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code.”
She came in for some inquisitive posers from senior lawyer B G Bansode, whose line of queries suggested selective police action in the matter. Shukla was deposing before the Koregaon Bhima inquiry commission as a witness in her capacity as the then Pune police chief. The commission is examining the causes of the violence on January 1, 2018, at Koregaon Bhima victory tower on the 200th anniversary of the battle of Koregaon Bhima.
Shukla maintained that based on prior intelligence inputs about possible trouble at the Elgar Parishad event held on December 31, 2017, at the historic Shaniwarwada, a heavy bandobast was deployed around the venue to ensure that things went smoothly without any breach of order.
It was because of the police’s heavy presence that the organisers had to drop their plan of a “Prerna March” from Shaniwarwada to Koregaon Bhima soon after the conclusion of the event, she said.
To another question, Shukla said it would not be correct to say that she did not personally examine any report, video recording, pictures of participants and speeches at the Elgar Parishad after the event.
“I have read each and every intelligence input (prior to the event), and instructed my officers to take adequate precautionary steps to ensure peaceful conduct of the event, and I also read the subsequent reports submitted to the commissioner of state intelligence department and the director-general of Maharashtra police by the then DCP (special branch) Sanjay Baviskar.”
To a question that the police did not issue any notices to the Parishad organisers for violation of permission norms as they thought there was nothing objectionable or cognisable about the event, Shukla said it was not correct. “The Pune police did not register any offence on their own, but on January 8, the police did register an offence,” she said and referred to a detailed affidavit she had filed with the commission last month.
She also sought to explain the circumstances following the January 1, 2018, violence that kept the police busy with the state-wide bandh calls, follow-up action related to the violence and other factors behind her not being able to go through the video recordings.
Earlier, Shukla replied in the negative to a question as to if then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had “ever called and consulted her” on the situation arising out of the January 1, 2018 violence. Fadnavis held the home portfolio in the then BJP-led government.
She said the Pune Municipal Corporation had first given permission to the organisers of the Elgar Parishad to hold the event at Shaniwarwada and the police later gave a conditional permission on December 27, 2017, for the event.
The commission’s lawyer Ashish Satpute, who conducted Shukla’s examination in chief, told TOI that the panel had cleared his plea to summon then special IGP (Kolhapur range) Vishwas Nangre Patil as a witness in the inquiry proceeding. The Pune rural police is under the Kolhapur range.
