New Delhi: It has been almost 45 months since the police began investigating the theory of a larger conspiracy in the cases emanating out of the Bhima-Koregaon violence of January 2018.
In this time, 16 persons have been arrested on allegations of conspiring to not only incite the specific violence but work towards overthrowing the government altogether—almost all of them coincidentally having a reputable record of working towards empowering those most marginalised and disenfranchised in society.
One person, an octogenarian, died in judicial custody, while his bail application was pending. Another, a septuagenarian, was granted medical bail only after nearly reaching death’s door due to serious medical ailments. Only one has been granted bail on a consideration of the merits of allegations.
Allegations that have been demonstrated with chargesheet upon chargesheet being filed, with documents running into thousands of pages. However, trial is yet to begin, with not even charges framed as of yet.
In the thousands of pages that the state police, now the National Investigating Agency, will want to lead as evidence, a bulk of the most relevant (purportedly) incriminating material is sourced from the digital devices of the arrested accused persons.
Letters and emails, showing active links with banned terrorist organisations and support for their causes. At the same time, repeated news stories have appeared indicating that independent experts analysed the copies of those digital devices and found sufficient basis to conclude that there had been concerted efforts to sabotage the devices to plant the evidence being relied upon today.
The earliest of these probably being news of the mobile numbers of many of those arrested in the case being on a list of numbers found by investigative journalists probing the use of the notorious ‘Pegasus’ spyware, with enough material to show that the device connected with one of these numbers (belonging to Rona Wilson) was indeed, hacked.
Then came news in July 2021 of a consulting firm finding that the computers of another accused, Advocate Surendra Gadling, were hacked to place incriminating emails that were now being relied upon to prosecute him. The most recent news report from December 2022 raised similar concerns in respect of the computers of the deceased Father Stan Swamy.
In short, the suggestion is that these persons were framed, and one of them died on the basis of these fabricated charges.
These are explosive suggestions but surprisingly it has not led to a flurry of activity in the trial court itself—either demanding discharge or at least for bail. The only activity in courts was a petition filed by Rona Wilson asking for a further investigation in the case and agencies to consider the findings of the consulting firm’s findings regarding the hacking of his phone. This petition has not yet been heard, and even that news has gone silent after the initial story broke out.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here