Param Bir Singh, ADG, Maharashtra Police

NEW DELHI: Maharashtra police said on Friday that the five recently arrested activists were taken into custody only after police got "clear evidence" of their alleged links with banned Maoist groups and added that a letter exchanged by one of the arrested activist spoke of planning a "Rajiv Gandhi-like" incident.

An email letter, between Rona Wilson and a CPI (Maoist) leader speaks of ending "Modi-raj" with a 'Rajiv Gandhi-type incident', Maharashtra police additional director general (law and order) Parambir Singh told reporters.

The letter also sought money for procuring grenade launchers, he said.

During the briefing, Singh also revealed details of a password protected hard drive. The hard drive, a key evidence in the case, had several documents including letters being exchanged between the activists and the CPI(Maoist) comrades, the police said.

Police has seized "thousands of letters" exchanged between the overground and the underground of Maoists. Some of these letters exchanged between the arrested activists spoke of planning "some big action" which would attract attention, Singh said.

The police also claimed that CPI(Maoist) plot was to use its over ground Maoists to disrupt the law and order of the state.

"When we were confident that clear links have been established then only we moved to take action against these people, in different cities. Evidence clearly establishes their roles with Maoists," Singh said.

"After analysing these evidences, we conducted raids in seven locations across the country and arrested five people," he said. The five activists were put under house arrest yesterday as per the orders of the Supreme Court.

Opposition parties and colleagues of the activists alleged that the arrests were intended to "muzzle dissent" and that the police had an "agenda".

In multi-city raids on Wednesday, Maharashtra police arrested five high-profile lawyers-activists claiming they instigated violence in Bhima-Koregaon villages in Pune on January 1. The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Bhima-Koregaon village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad , or conclave, on December 31 last year.

Searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi.

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