Activists' house arrest extended till Sept 12

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has extended the house arrest of five activists held in Bhima Koregaon case till September 12. The top court pulled up the Maharashtra government for the press meet held by its police last week, giving evidence in public.

Annoyed over the statements given by the Assistant Commissioner of Police of Pune on the matter, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the police were casting aspersions on the court. "You must ask your police officials to be more responsible. The matter is before us, and we don't want to hear from police officials that the Supreme Court is wrong," the bench told Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was appearing for Maharashtra government.

The Maharashtra police have defended its demand for custody of the activists - Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonzalves, Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bhardwaj and Gautam Navalakha - saying that keeping these activists under house arrest will hamper the investigation in the case.

The Maharashtra government had Wednesday told the apex court that the five rights activists were arrested due to the cogent evidence linking them with the banned CPI(Maoist) and not because of their dissenting views.

The state police had filed the affidavit in response to a plea of historian Romila Thapar and four others, challenging the arrest of the five activists in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence case, and claimed that they were planning to carry out violence in the country and ambush the security forces.

The raids were carried out as part of a probe into an event called Elgar Parishad, or conference, on December 31 last year, which had later triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima village in Pune district of Maharashtra.