Activists’ arrest
Additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Maharashtra government, said the court should make it clear that after adjudication by it, the arrested accused cannot avail remedies simultaneously on similar issues at other judicial fora.
The Maharashtra police had arrested the rights activists 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 Bhima Koregaon village.
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 Supreme Court had on September 6 taken strong exception to the statement of a senior police officer on the arrest of the activists, saying he had cast “aspersions” on the top court.
An irked court had referred to the statements made to the media by the Pune assistant commissioner of police, and said he was casting aspersions on the apex court by saying it should not have entertained the petition against the arrests.
The Maharashtra government had told the court that the petitioners were “strangers” to the matter and questioned their locus. Its counsel had said there was enough evidence, including materials taken from the activists’ computers and other sources which belied the perception of the petitioners about those arrested.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, the counsel for Tushar Damgude who had filed the FIR in the Bhima Koregaon violence, had opposed the plea of Thapar and said it could have been raised in the magistrate’s court by the affected parties.
Earlier, the Maharashtra government had filed its response to the plea, claiming the five activists were arrested due to the cogent evidence linking them with the banned CPI (Maoist), and not because of their dissenting views.
The state’s response had come in the backdrop of the apex court, while ordering the house arrest of the five activists on August 29, categorically stating that “dissent is the safety valve of democracy”.
The court had questioned the state police’s move to arrest these activists nine months after the incident and said all of them were reputed citizens and “stifling the dissent” was not good. the Congress extending support to the TDP’s no-confidence notion against the government in the Lok Sabha. The TDP reciprocated the gesture by backing the Congress candidate in the elections to the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson’s post.
The TDP also supported the Congress’s nationwide shutdown call against rising fuel prices on September 10.
Political experts argue that an alliance with the TDP will be a “win-win situation” for the Congress, especially after its complete decimation in the 2014 assembly and Lok Sabha elections. It failed to open its account in the state assembly as well as the Lok Sabha.
“The Congress has nothing to lose and rather stands to gain if it strikes a seat-sharing deal with the TDP. In 2014, the Congress was buried in Andhra Pradesh due to bifurcation and hasn’t recovered yet. Much depends on how many seats the TDP allocates to the Congress,” said Hyderabad-based political analyst, C Narasimha Rao.