The Maharashtra government told Bombay High Court on Wednesday that it could not allow activist Gautam Navlakha to make phone calls from prison as he was facing charges of terrorism.

Navlakha is an accused in the Elgaar Parishad-Maoist links case.

State counsel Sangeeta Shinde placed before a bench headed by Justice Nitin Jamdar a resolution that the Maharashtra government had issued on March 25, imposing such prohibition.

According to the resolution signed by the inspector-general of police, a coin box facility for inmates to make phone calls is available in jails, including the Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai, where Navlakha and the other accused in the case are lodged as undertrials.

However, the resolution lists 10 categories of undertrials and convicts who cannot be granted access to the coin box facility. The first of these 10 categories is the section dealing with charges of terrorism or conspiring against the nation and the government.

Shinde submitted the resolution in response to Navlakha’s appeal filed through his counsel Yug Mohit Chaudhary, seeking that he be permitted to make phone and video calls while in prison.

He said in his plea that video call facilities had been extended to all inmates during the past two years because of the Covid protocol.

But now that physical meetings have resumed in prisons across the state, the video call facility has been withdrawn, he said.

Navlakha said his partner was a senior citizen and lived in Delhi and it was not possible for her to visit him often in prison.

Chaudhary contended on Wednesday that denying phone call access to Navlakha was a breach of his fundamental right to life.

But Shinde argued that the state prison manual only prescribed making available “reasonable facilities” for communication to inmates.

“What is the hurry in this matter anyway?” Shinde asked. “He (Navlakha) has the option of writing letters, and physical meetings are also allowed for all inmates,” she said. PTI