A special NIA court in Mumbai remanded 82-year-old human rights activist Father Stan Swamy to judicial custody till October 23 on Friday, a day after his arrest in connection with the Elgar Parishad-alleged Maoist links case.
The social worker was arrested by the National Investigation Agency from his Ranchi residence on Thursday evening. He was produced before the special court here on Friday.
The court remanded him in judicial custody as the probe agency did not seek his remand.
NIA arrested Swamy from his Ranchi home in connection with the violence in Bhima Koregaon near Pune in December 2017. He was placed under arrest for his alleged links with the banned CPI(Maoist), NIA officials said.
Swamy, who has been questioned twice earlier by Pune Police and the NIA, was taken from his Ranchi residence on Thursday in a cloak-and-dagger operation, leaving the local police and the administration in the dark.
Swamy, known for his life-long work for the betterment of tribals, is the 16th person to be arrested in the case, in which people have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the anti-terror law UAPA.
Rights activists from across the country have condemned his arrest. In Ranchi, activists are planning to hold a solidarity march later in the day to protest against his detention and the Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Government’s silence on the manner he was picked up.
In a video posted hours before his arrest, Swamy said the NIA had been interrogating him and had questioned him for 15 hours during a span of five days.
"Now they want me to go to Mumbai, which I have said that I won't go," he said, citing the pandemic.
The video, posted on YouTube, was recorded two days before his arrest. "I have never been to Bhima Koregaon for which I am being made an accused," he said. He added that he had asked for questioning through video conference and hoped that better "human sense" would prevail.
"...what is happening to me is not something unique happening to me alone, it is a broader process taking place all over the country. We all are aware how prominent intellectuals, lawyers, writers, poets, activists, student leaders are all put in jail because they have expressed their dissent or raised questions about the ruling powers of India,” Swamy said in the video.
He said he was part of the process and, in a way, happy to be so because he was not a “silent spectator”.
“I am ready to pay the price whatever be it," Swamy said.
NIA officials claimed that investigations established he was actively involved in the activities of the CPI (Maoist). The NIA also alleged that he was in contact with conspirators -- Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Hany Babu, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde to further the group's activities.
The agency alleged that Swamy had also received funds through an associate for furthering the agenda. Besides, he is convenor of the Persecuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee (PPSC), a frontal organisation of the CPI(Maoist), the officials claimed.
They said literature, propaganda material of the CPI(Maoist) and documents related to communications for furthering the group's programmes were seized from his possession.
The Bhima Koregaon case was taken over by the NIA on January 24. Pune Police has alleged that the violence was caused following speeches given by members of the group Elgar Parishad a day before.