The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday summoned the defence lawyers representing all accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
Advocate Nihal Singh Rathod has appeared for the first batch of accused — Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson and Mahesh Raut. All of them were arrested on June 6, 2018, under sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. He has represented them before the trial court, the Bombay High Court, and the Supreme Court.
Mr. Rathod told The Hindu , “I received summons from the NIA to appear before it on August 28, but I replied saying I cannot as my grandmother is on the deathbed. So I will now go to the NIA’s Mumbai office on September 7.” He added, “It is very unusual for an investigating agency to summon a defence lawyer in a case as they enjoy a client-attorney privilege.”
Advocate Viplav Teltumbde is the nephew of Prof. Anand Teltumbde, also an accused lodged at Taloja Central Jail. He said, “I received the summons on Thursday and I have been asked to be present on September 3.”
According to Mr. Rathod, the NIA is relying upon a letter allegedly written by another accused, Sudha Bharadwaj, to comrade Prakash, which has named him and other lawyers who have been summoned in the case.
On September 28, 2018, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud of the Supreme Court had a dissenting opinion with respect to refusing the formation of a special investigation team to probe the case.
Referring to the letter, Justice Chandrachud had said, “There is a serious bone of contention in regard to the authenticity of the letter which, besides being undated, does not contain any details including the e-mail header. A statement has been handed over to the court in support of the submission that the letter is an obvious fabrication made by a Marathi-speaking person because in as many as 17 places, it contains references to words scribed in Devanagari, using forms peculiar to Marathi. It has been urged that Ms. Bhardwaj, who does not belong to Maharashtra and does not speak Marathi, could not possibly have written a letter in Devanagari, utilising essentially Marathi forms of grammar or address.”
