On Tuesday, 18th October, 2016, Kobad Ghandy, an alleged leader of banned CPI (Maoist), was acquitted of all charges in a six-year-old case by the Court of Additional Sessions and District Judge Mohammad Gulzar. Ghandy was booked by police in 2010 for delivering two anti-national speeches at Punjabi University. After his acquittal, Ghandy disassociated himself from the banned outfit, saying, “I was never a member of any banned outfit and this has been proved both in Delhi and Patiala courts.”

Ghandy was arrested by the Delhi police in September 2009 and had been booked in January 2010 by Patiala Sadar Police, under Sections 10, 13, 18 and 20 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Sections 419 and 120-B of the IPC, for holding meetings on the premises of Punjabi University in April and May 2009 to allegedly promote the Maoist ideology.

Born in Mumbai in 1951, Kobad Ghandy was a student of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College, and harbored strong communist leanings. Allegedly a Maoist-Naxalite leader with the banned Communist Party of India, he was assigned the task of spreading Maoist influence in urban areas and running its propaganda wing.