Centre argues its wrong of Supreme Court to entertain plea challenging arrest of rights activists allegedly involved in Bhima Koregaon violence, CJI disagrees
The Supreme Court, on Monday (September 17), once again extended the interim house arrest of five civil rights activists who were arrested by the Maharashtra police on August 28 following nationwide raids connected to the probe into the January 1 Bhima Koregaon communal clashes.
The activists – Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao – have been under house arrest since August 29. The top court has now extended the interim orders till September 19 when counsel for the prosecution – the Maharashtra police and the Centre – are likely to present their case diary against the accused and “additional evidence” of the connections between the activists and Maoist organizations.
It may be recalled that the court’s interim order placing the activists under house arrest has come on a petition filed by five eminent citizens – Romila Thapar, Maja Daruwala, Devaki Jain, Prabhat Pattnaik and Satish Deshpande – who had challenged the arrests. Families of some of the arrested activists had later filed affidavits in the case.
On Monday, the counsel for the prosecution continued to challenge the locus standi of the petitioners in the case with Additional Solicitor Generals (ASG) Tushar Mehta and Maninder Singh arguing that the Supreme Court should not have entertained the petition to begin with and that pleas by the arrested activists were already sub judice at the lower and high court level. Senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for the petitioners, however, strongly rebutted the submissions by the prosecution.
The top court bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, which is hearing the petition, made it clear at the outset that the interim house arrest orders will continue till Wednesday.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra, however, pointed it out to the counsel for the petitioners and the prosecution that the bench was, at the moment, was entertaining the petition “on the foundations of liberty” and would assess the “issues like independent enquiry… at a later stage.” Senior advocate Singhvi has demanded that the apex court must order a probe by a special investigation team to look into the arrest of the activists and whether allegations of their involvement in the January 1 Bhima Koregaon communal clashes or those of them being involved with Maoists “in a conspiracy against the State or to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi” have any truth.
Wednesday’s proceedings also saw a fresh verbal duel between senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan and ASG Tushar Mehta. While Dhavan was arguing on behalf of the petitioners, Mehta, along with ASG Maninder Singh maintained that “strangers (referring to the petitioners) have no locus in criminal matters.” Counsels Singh and Mehta demanded that the cases filed by the activists in the lower and high courts must be entertained while the extant petition in the Supreme Court should be set aside. However, the suggestion attracted a strong rebuke from Dhavan who snapped at Mehta while pointedly telling the bench: “Let us have a hearing without interruptions. Mehta should be doing cricket commentary… don’t try to convert everything into a stupid drama.”
Mehta retorted saying he did not want to “stoop to his (Dhavan’s) level” and continued to submit that “many incriminating documents against the arrested social activists have been recovered during the investigation”. He claimed that the activists have “not only been arrested for their involvement in the Bhima Koregaon event but also for conspiring to disrupt peace in the country.”