Gautam Navlakha and other Naxalites he was associated with were in touch with Hizbul Mujahideen and other Kashmiri separatist leaders, the Pune Police told Bombay High Court on Wednesday.

The Pune Police had arrested Gautam Navlakha and four other activists on August 28 in relation with their alleged involvement in the Elgaar Parishad and the Bhima Koregaon violence. Navlakha along with few other alleged urban naxals is facing a case for alleged links with Naxalites. Navlakha had moved the court to quash the FIR filed against him.

The Pune Police have said that in not being able to arrest Navlakha is creating a hindrance in their investigation. However, a division bench of justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre extended protection from arrest to Navlakha till further orders.

According to Pune Police, some of the documents recovered from the laptops of co-accused Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling show that Navlakha was associated with various Naxal groups and they had conducted “bilateral talks” with the Hizbul leaders.

- Advertisement -

Earlier, Pune Police had informed a special court in Pune that the activists arrested in connection with the Elgaar Parishad case were in touch with Central Committee members of the banned CPI-Maoist, and they had discussed routing funds for Maoist activities through hawala transactions.

As per reports, Aruna Pai, Pune Police counsel, Navlakha was also liaising with the banned terror organisations including Hizbul Mujahideen since 2011. She alleged that he was also in touch with Kashmiri separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Shakil Bakshi between 2011 and 2014.

Navlakha had earlier attended events organised by Ghulam Nabi Fai who was sentenced to two years of jail by the US for concealing the fact that Fai’s organization, Kashmiri American Council (KAC), was funded by Pakistani Spy Agency, ISI, to deliberately tilt USA’s policy regarding Kashmir against India.