Hyderabad: According to the claim made by a family member of Maoist ideologue and poet Varavara Rao, the arrest and searchers in his two daughter’s residences were “illegal”.

N Venugopal alleged that the Police from Pune who came to arrest the famous figure did not have any arrest and search warrant against his maternal uncle Varavara Rao.

The police team from Pune arrested the activist from his residence in Hyderabad yesterday for alleged links with Maoists. The residences of the activist’s two daughters and a journalist too were searched by the police before arresting him.

“At the end of the whole operation, they (Pune police) gave a ‘panchnama’ but that’s most untenable and illegal document,” Mr. Venugopal claimed today.

He also said that the seven-page Panchnama report was in Marathi version of the language.

“First thing in law is if any seizure is done in any house, it should be given in a language understood by the people whose house is searched. So, this seven-page document is illegal. Even digits were in Marathi. So, nobody knows what’s there,” Mr. Venugopal claimed.

He further alleged that the police also brought their own staff witnesses from Pune.

According to the rule, he said, that in any Panchnama report, local and genuine citizens need to be the witnesses. “So, this also an illegal attempt,” he said.

He further went on to allege that on each page of the Panchnama report, these two witnesses and police officer signed but as for Varavara Rao’s and his wife Hemalatha’s signatures were taken only on the seventh page.

“That means in the first six pages they (police) can concoct, they can cook up, they can write whatever, we don’t know it’s in Marathi, we don’t know if they wrote ‘we got bombs, we got pistols and whatever.’ The whole operation was illegal”, Mr. Venugopal alleged, while talking to the news agencies.

Varavara Rao’s wife is the elder sister of Venugopal while he himself is the son of the activist’s sister.

“Original case is Bhima-Koregaon. They (Pune police) are now claiming that as part of the investigation, they have found some letter; in that letter, they found something else and on (Narendra) Modi’s assassination attempt. This is a byproduct of the original case”, he alleged.

The arrests and raids are said to be a part of the investigation going on about the violence during Maharashtra’s Koregaon Bhima village after an event called as ‘Elgar Parishad (conclave) held last year in Pune.

Allegedly due to their “provocative” speeches during the event, which authorities say triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima village, five people were held over Maoists links in June.

During the search operations conducted by the police in one of the premises of the five people, who were arrested in June in connection with the Elgar Parishad event held on December 31, Varavara Rao’s name cropped up in a letter which was seized from there. The event is held every year to commemorate 200 years of the Koregaon Bhima battle in 1818.

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