Bhima Koregaon violence case: Activist Varavara Rao arrested from Hyderabad residence after months of house arrest

Activist Varavara Rao was arrested on Saturday evening by the Pune Police from his residence in Hyderabad after being under house arrest since August for having alleged links with CPI (Maoist) in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Joint Commissioner of Police, Pune, said that Rao's house arrest extension given by the Hyderabad High Court ended on Saturday.

In addition to that, the JCP said that another petition of the activist before the court is also disposed of by the Hyderabad Court.  He will be produced by before the Pune court, added the JCP. 

"Varavara Rao's house arrest extension given by Hyderabad High Court ends today and in addition to that, his another petition before the court is also disposed of by Hyderabad Court. Hence, he is arrested by Pune Police and will be produced before Pune Court," said JCP, Pune.

Earlier on October 25, the Hyderabad High Court had extended his house arrest for three weeks.  

In August, police arrested five left-wing activists, after raiding their homes in several states for suspected Maoist links over the Elgar Parishad meeting which was held a day before the violence.

The police raided the homes of the activists and lawyers from five states - Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, Bharadwaj in Faridabad and Gautam Navalakha in Delhi. 

In a media briefing, the police had released details of seized letters related to five activists arrested in June in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence.

The police also claimed they have "conclusive proof" to link Left-wing activists arrested in June and this week to Maoists, saying one of them spoke of a "Rajiv Gandhi-type event to end Modi-raj".