Meanwhile, the judge commenced hearing on the applications from Dhawale’s application.
On Dhawale’s application, advocates R Satyanarayanan and Neeraj Yadav, submitted that he had lent his name to the Elgar Parishad event along with other organisers like retired judges Justices PB Sawant and BG Kolse Patil.
Dhawale who owns a Marathi left-leaning publication, was arrested on June 6, 2018 after an FIR was registered 8 days after the Elgar event, his application stated.
Dhawale’s lawyers stated that the speech called for protecting democracy and for peaceful resistance in accordance with the fundamental right to speech under Constitution of India. Satyanarayanan contended that the present case was registered against him solely because he called upon others not to vote the BJP back to power.
It was further submitted that the addition of two more persons as accused in FIR without them being present at the event showed the malafides and prejudiced intent of the investigation to facilitate planting of fabricated electronic records in their computer hard disks and stage a pre-planned discovery.
Source: Barandbench
