New Delhi: Police have arrested five activists, including an editor, a professor and a lawyer, on the suspicion of being Maoists, more than six months after an attack by alleged Hindutva groups on Ambedkarities visiting a war memorial near Pune.

Those arrested have been booked under several charges, including the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Pune police on Wednesday arrested Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) spokesperson Rona Wilson from New Delhi, Marathi fortnightly Vidrohi's editor Sudhir Dhawale from Mumbai, and lawyer Surendra Gadling, professor Shoma Sen and former Prime Minister Rural Development (PMRD) Fellow Mahesh Raut from Nagpur.

In a Delhi court, which granted Wilson's transit remand, the police claimed they had seized "incriminating" materials, including emails to alleged Maoists, during raids on the five in April.

A police source said the five would be probed for their links with Maoists and whether they attempted to incite the violence at an event preceding the Koregaon anniversary.

In 1927, B.R. Ambedkar had begun an annual gathering of his mostly Dalit followers at Koregaon Bhima, where the East India Company's predominantly Mahar Dalit force of 824 men defeated Peshwa Baji Rao II's army of 28,000 mostly Maratha troops on January 1, 1818.

On the second centenary, Ambedkarites were attacks by mobs allegedly led by RSS leader Manohar Bhide's Shri Shiva Prathisthan Hindustan and former BJP corporator Milind Ekbote's Samasth Hindu Aghadi. A 28-year-old passer-by was killed in stone-pelting.

Bhide, whom Narendra Modi had addressed as Guruji in 2014, was given a clean chit by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in March. Ekbote was arrested and granted bail in April.

On December 31, several Ambedkarite groups had held an event called the Elgar Parishad (Declaration Council) "calling for an end to neo-Peshwai", in Pune's Shaniwarwada. Gujarat MLA and land rights activist Jignesh Mevani, Jawaharlal Nehru University student activist Umar Khalid, deceased Hyderabad University Dalit scholar Vemula Rohith's mother Radhika and several others spoke at the event.

On Wednesday, Mevani called the arrests of the five activists an "attack on the Ambedkarite movement".

Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde said in a statement: "The entire operation has been stage-managed by the Maharashtra government keeping in mind the judicial enquiry headed by Justice J.N. Patel (Retd) in order to ensure that submissions from the victims of the Hindutva and state violence are suppressed.

"It has also been done to queer the pitch for the forthcoming elections in the state as well as 2019. The BJP government is desperate to create a reign of terror in order to polarise the Dalit and Bahujan votes."

Junior home minister Hansraj Ahir told news agency ANI: "It was already known that the violence in Bhima Koregaon was a well-organised conspiracy to defame the Maharashtra and central governments The police investigation has proved that the movement was made violent by the organisations who work in favour of urban Naxalism."

Politician and Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar told The Telegraph: "It is a desperate attempt to malign the Elgar Parishad,which was successful in creating dialogue between Marathas, OBCs, Dalits and tribals who had been at loggerheads over the Maratha demand for OBC status and the repeal of the Atrocities Act.

"The divide suited the BJP, which has now lost goodwill and has resorted to witch-hunting. The BJP is being questioned everywhere as to why it let its goons beat up Dalits commemorating their history."

CRPP president S.A.R. Geelani said outfit spokesperson Wilson was "not even remotely connected to anything in Koregaon Bhima and he had not even gone there".

"This is a clear case of framing people in a false case. While the culprits of the violence roam free, the state muzzles voices that express concern over atrocities.... Rona had just returned from his home in Kerala. He was working on proposals for applying to foreign universities," Geelani said.

Wilson, 45, was one of the early members of the JNU unit of the Democratic Students Union, which along with the KKM, the CRPP and Gadling's Indian Association of People's Lawyers, was termed as a front of the banned CPI (Maoist) by the home ministry in 2014.

Gadling represents Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba at the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court in his appeal against conviction for being a member of another Maoist organisation called the Revolutionary Democratic Front.

He also represents the KKM in a 2011 case on the outfit's alleged links to Maoists.