The Nationwide Investigation Company (NIA) on Thursday raided the residence of senior journalist and author N Venugopal in Hyderabad in reference to a case associated to a former central committee member of banned outfit Communist Social gathering of India (Maoist), Sanjay Deepak Rao.
Venugopal, who runs {a magazine} by identify Veekshanam, is the nephew of poet P Varavara Rao, who’s among the many 15 folks charged underneath the Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act within the Bhima Koregaon case in 2018. The searches, which started at 5 am at Venugopal’s residence at Himayatnagar in Hyderabad, went on until 10 am, folks acquainted with the matter stated. Later, the NIA officers confiscated his cellphone.
Whereas the NIA authorities refused to talk to reporters, Venugopal stated he “was compelled to give up his cellphone”, as they have been agency on seizing the identical. “They searched all my books and different belongings, earlier than leaving the place,” he stated.
In accordance with Venugopal, he was “falsely implicated” within the case pertaining to the arrest of Sanjay Deepak Rao, who was arrested by the Telangana police in September 2023. “I used to be named as accused No. 22 within the case, although the fees framed in opposition to me have been utterly baseless and false,” he stated.
Venugopal stated the NIA had booked him and others underneath the sections of Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act, Telangana Public Safety Act and Arms Act, primarily based on an alleged confession assertion of Sanjay Deepak Rao, who stated he had met some intellectuals from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in September 2021, to debate the plan ‘to destabilise the Indian authorities by means of armed revolution.’
