Now urban Maoists
In the early hours of June 6, the Pune city police arrested five activists from Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi in connection with provocative speeches made at a conference in Pune on December 31 last year. The speeches made at the Elgar Parishad allegedly incited violence on January 1 in nearby Koregaon-Bhima, where around 300,000 Dalits had gathered. One person was killed in the riots that later spread across Maharashtra.
Police have accused Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen and Mahesh Raut from Nagpur, Sudhir Dhawale from Mumbai and Rona Wilson from Delhi of misleading the Dalits and ingraining hardline thinking of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) to create a rift between communities. Pune joint commissioner of police Ravindra Kadam said, They have been booked for getting funds from Maoists to organise Elgar Parishad. The police claim to have found evidence in Wilson's laptop that the Parishad was
