‘Struggle under the guidance of chairman Mao’: Pune police produce new emails in Elgar Parishad case

During the hearing of the bail applications of the five activists and lawyers arrested for their alleged role in the Elgar Parishad case a in Pune court on Monday, the Pune police produced a new trail of emails of the alleged communication between CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Muppala Laxmanrao Ganapathy and revolutionary writer Varavara Rao, who is presently under house arrest in Hyderabad.

While the bail hearings of social activists Sudha Bhardwaj, Rona Wilson, Arun Ferreira, Surendra Gadling and Vernon Gonsalves was going in the court of additional sessions judge KD Vadane, the prosecution read out the alleged communication between Ganapathy and Rao. District government pleader Ujjawala Pawar said in court that after retrieving the exchange of letters from Rona Wilson’s computer, the police also recovered an email address and password which they kept under observation. Later, the police observed an “exchange of emails” through the same email id between Rao and Ganapathy. The first email was sent by Ganapathy after which two replies were written by Rao.

As per the argument of the prosecutor in court, after the arrest of activists Mahesh Raut, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale in June, the first communication was made through email by Ganapathy to Rao. The email, dated July 14, 2018, said:

“Dear Comrade, the Central committee is deeply concerned about recent arrests …  Situation is out of control now. CC (Central Committee ) has also received some news copies of this … The point of a great concern is how these letters are leaked, by whose negligence. We need to put the methods to understand the breach including methods used by investigative agencies. Please ensure confidentiality of this communication channel, any report or message is sent outside through microchip through an encrypted and short password … We must take this as challenge without fearing the tactics by undemocratic state machinery … Please delete this email after reading.”

The prosecution said Rao replied on the same day, saying, “Revolutionary greetings to all. Struggle under the guidance of chairman Mao. In the coming days I will send the detailed reply with my own assessment … I will put in a place strict rules for use of personal mobile phone and computers.”

The communications have been produced a few months after the Pune police allegedly found a letter in Rona Wilson’s house about a plot to assassinate the prime minister. The letter had been treated with some amount of scepticism when it was released in June.