SC extends till Sept 17 activists’ house arrest
‘MUZZLING DISSENT’ Bench adjourns hearing on historian’s plea
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday extended until September 17 the house arrest of five human rights activists arrested by Pune police for suspected Maoist links in connection with the January 1 violence in Bhima-koregaon in Maharashtra .
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud adjourned the hearing on a petition filed by historian Romila Thapar on Wednesday after they were informed that senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhivi, who is appearing for Thapar, was busy in another court.
Last month, Thapar had filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the August 28 arrests of l awyer and trade unionist Sudha Bhardwaj, Telugu poet P Varavara Rao, activist Gautam Navlakha, and lawyers Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves. She claimed that the arrests were aimed at muzzling dissent.
Observing that dissent was the “safety valve of democracy and the pressure cooker will burst if you do not allow the valve,” the apex court had disallowed Pune police from taking custody of the five activists and said they should be kept under house arrest.
Pune Police had claimed that the arrest of the five activists was part of a probe into a conclave called Elgar Parishad in Pune on December 31, 2017, when activists and Dalit organisations came together and conspired to trigger violence the next day in Bhima Koregaon, where Hinduta activists and Dalits clashed.
The Maharashtra government had last week, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, defended the police’s action, and claimed that the activists were active members of the banned outfit, Communist Party of India (Maoist). The affidavit says the five “are not arrested based upon any dissenting views expressed by them or difference in their political or other ideologies”. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Wednesday asked the Centre to formulate with rules to regulate clinical drug trials on humans by pharmaceutical firms.
A bench of Justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta said unregulated clinical trials have a “serious impact” on people’s health. The court made the remark after it was informed about the Centre’s draft rules, framed in February this year. The government counsel said the draft provides for compensation ranging from ~5 lakh to ~75 lakh to the people who undergo such trials, and that suggestions and objections to the rules have been invited.
Advocate Sanjay Parikh, representing one of the petitioners, said the rules have to be framed to regulate the trials as people were being treated as “subjects” during the process. “Nobody looks into the serious question of deaths because of these trials,” he said, adding that earlier clinical trials were conducted on people without them being informed.