In a 2:1 verdict, the Supreme Court on Friday refused probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the house arrest of five activists Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon case.
The apex court also extended the house arrest of the five activists for four weeks and directed the Pune police to go ahead with the probe.
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“It is not a case of arrest because of dissent,” Justice AM Khanwilkar said while reading out the verdict.
“Accused cannot choose which probe agency should examine the case,” he observed.
The apex court, however, said the activists can move the trial court for relief.
The five activists are under arrest at their respective homes since August 29.
However, Justice DY Chandrachud presented a dissenting opinion stating that the case was “fit to be probed by SIT”. “Sufficient material placed before us to order SIT,” he said.
Justice Chandrachud further said, “the court has to be vigilant that liberty is not sacrificed on the altar of conjecture”.
A plea by historian Romila Thapar and others had sought the immediate release of the five rights activists and a SIT probe into their arrest.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra also comprising justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud was hearing the matter.
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The Maharashtra government had submitted before the Supreme Court that the five rights activists were arrested due to the ‘cogent’ evidence linking them to the banned CPI (Maoist) and not because of their dissenting views.
The Maharashtra police had arrested them on August 28 in connection with an FIR lodged following a conclave — ‘Elgaar Parishad’ — held on December 31 last year that had later triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima village in the state.
Prominent Telugu poet Rao was arrested on August 28 from Hyderabad, while activists Gonsalves and Ferreira were nabbed from Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bharadwaj from Faridabad in Haryana and civil liberties activist Navlakha from Delhi.
The apex court had on September 19 said it would look into the case with a “hawk’s eye” as “liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjectures”.
The apex court had also said that it may order a SIT probe if it found that the evidence has been “cooked up”.
