New Delhi: Urban naxal Sudha Bharadwaj, who was sent to police custody till November 6 by a special city court on Saturday, demanded the same facilities that were promised by the government for fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya.

Bharadwaj’s lawyer said in her submission before the court that her client was ill and need proper food, medication and care. She said that Bharadwaj should be provided with “conditions of incarceration, bathing and toilet facilities, which are on par with those that have been promised to be provided to Vijay Mallya”.

Mallya is currently in London and while convincing a court there to not extradite him, he cited the bad condition of jails in India. 

Other than Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira were also taken into custody after they were accused of having Maoist links.

Gonsalves and Ferreira had been taken into custody by Pune police on Friday evening after the court rejected the bail applications of all three, observing that the material collected by the police, on the face of it, shows their alleged links with Maoists.

Public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar argued that as all the accused were under house arrest (as per the Supreme Court's directions), they could not be interrogated, and so their police custody was needed.

Seeking their police custody for 14 days, Pawar told the court that the preliminary investigation revealed that the three had links with the banned CPI (Maoist) and were involved in recruitment as well as raising funds for Maoist activities.

The alleged urban naxal were involved in "larger conspiracy to threaten the democratic set-up of the nation", Pawar told the court.

With inputs from PTI