It was all about the signature call of 'Naxalvad toh bahana hai, Ekbote, Bhide ko bachana hai' (the naxal label is a convenient excuse to shield the real culprits, Ekbote and Bhide) at a protest gathering at the Bandra (E) Collectors' Office on Friday. Groups of Jai Bhim supporters converged on the buzzing intersection holding the ubiquitous blue flags to protest the arrest of five people in connection with the Elgaar Parishad held to mark 200 years of the Bhima-Koregaon battle in December 2017.

Police net
On Wednesday, the police had arrested five people — Sudhir Dhawale from Mumbai, Roma Wilson from Delhi, and Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut and Surendra Gadling from Nagpur — claiming that they are members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and had helped fund the Elgaar Parishad with money from Maoist organisations. "Dhawale is no Maoist, he is a worker, an active one," shouted some from the Republican Sena, squatting at the divider. They claimed that the naxal spiel had been made up, "to steer attention away from the real cause, shielding the upper caste Ekbote and Bhide," who, they claimed, were the real instigators of the violence.