Evidence, not dissent, behind arrests: Cops
The Maharashtra government on Wednesday told the Supreme 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's response came in the backdrop of the apex court stating in the previous hearing that "dissent is the safety valve of democracy".
The police also filed an 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. The police has claimed while executing the arrests that the five activists were planning to wreak havoc in the country and ambush the security forces.
While prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao was arrested from Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira were nabbed from Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bharadwaj from Faridabad and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha was arrested from Delhi.
The raids were carried out as part of a probe into an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year, which had later triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima village in Pune district of Maharashtra.
The police sought their custody and questioned the locus of Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociologist Satish Deshpande and legal expert Maja Daruwala, dubbing them as "strangers" to the investigation in the matter.
The police also told the court that the activists were part of a criminal conspiracy and active members of the banned CPI (Maoist), which had arranged public meetings under the banner of 'Elgaar Parishad'.
The police also told the court that the five arrested activists were not being indicted in the FIR for the first
time but some had past "criminal antecedents" and were imprisoned.
The police has said that accused were planning and preparing for a series of criminal offences in connivance with other persons. The accused were also involved in selecting and encouraging cadres to go underground in 'struggle area', mobilising and distributing money, facilitating selection and purchase of arms, deciding the rates of such arms and suggesting the routes and ways of smuggling such arms into India for its onward distribution amongst the cadres.
The affidavit said the house arrest of the activists merely restricted their physical movement and they can always ensure the destruction of evidence elsewhere while alerting other potential accused by being at home.