MUMBAI, July 11 -- Activist-lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, on Friday opposed the National Investigation Agency (NIA)'s plea seeking cancellation of her bail. Bharadwaj told a special court that the agency's allegations that a gathering on January 19 at the Mumbai Press Club was convened to propagate the ideology of the banned CPI (Maoist) and further the "Urban Naxal" movement were "wholly false and malicious" and "no documents or evidence of any kind supporting these" had been supplied to her by the NIA. In her affidavit, filed through advocate Yug Chaudhry, Bharadwaj said that journalists, members of civil society, researchers and some co-accused were present at the Press Club gathering. She said the journalists who had invited her wanted to discuss prison conditions in Maharashtra and the difficulties faced while on bail in the case. The Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case stems from an event in Pune on December 31, 2017, a day before violence broke out near the Bhima Koregaon war memorial. The NIA, which took over the investigation in 2020, alleged that several activists and academics named in the case had links with the banned CPI (Maoist) and were part of a larger conspiracy to "wage war against the state". Bharadwaj said she had spent most of her time chatting with co-accused Gautam Navlakha's partner, Sahba Husain, and co-accused Anand Teltumbde's wife, Rama. She also argued that communication between co-accused could not by itself justify cancellation of bail, pointing out that they had earlier interacted on several occasions. In fact, in a hearing on June 24, an NIA officer had himself requested co-accused Vernon Gonsalves to provide her with copies of NIA documents, and on January 28, the special court had expressly directed the accused persons to discuss and arrive at a decision on a technical point on the discharge applications. The activist said the accused had relied on each other during their prolonged incarceration, shared the grief of co-accused Father Stan Swamy's death and endured personal bereavements, including the death of her own father. She said that in those circumstances it was "most natural and human" for them to communicate when they met. "Anything else would be to deny our common humanity and our shared suffering," she said, adding that the NIA should "desist from making malicious, false and frivolous applications that are only designed to delay and avoid the trial which will expose the falsity of their case and prove my innocence"....