Lost in Marathi translation
Navlakha transit remand
Language is a tool of communication but on Tuesday it hampered the proceedings of the Delhi High Court, which stayed the transit remand of human rights activist Gautam Navlakha for want of translated copies of the FIR furnished before it by the Maharashtra police.
The court has ordered Navlakha’s house arrest until Wednesday morning as it was unable to understand the documents and the FIR, which were in Marathi.
The division bench, which posted the matter for urgent hearing on Wednesday morning, has directed the Pune police to submit translated copies of all documents.
“We were shown the documents produced before the Magistrate court, most of which, including the FIR, are in Marathi and only the application for transit remand is in Hindi. It is not possible for the court to make out from these documents what precisely the case against Navlakha is,” the judges said in their order.
“Thus we deem it appropriate to direct the police that Navlakha will not be taken away from Delhi and this case will be taken up the first thing on Wednesday morning. By then, translations of all the documents produced before the Magistrate will be provided,” the bench said.
The bench was hearing a writ of habeas corpus filed by activist Gautam Navlakha challenging the orders of a Magistrate court in Delhi’s Saket, granting his transit remand. The orders enable the Maharashtra police to bring him to Pune for interrogation. He is alleged to have Maoist links and is also accused of having a hand in the plot to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The court has only allowed his advocates and family members to meet him. Meanwhile, advocate Vrinda Grover has lamented the brazen breach of orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court by the Pune police, since she was not been kept in the loop abolut her client and human rights activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s whereabouts. In her statement, Grover said that despite the orders to house arrest Sudha, the Pune police have taken her to some other place.