Hearing the case on the arrest of five ‘activists’ linked to the Bhima Koregaon violence on January 1, 2018, the Supreme Court today refused to interfere with the arrests. According to reports, the apex court also refused to constitute SIT and asked the Pune police to go ahead with their probe.
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The apex court has extended the house arrest of the arrested persons Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha for another four weeks. It has asked the arrested persons to move to the trial court with their appeals.
The court has reportedly ruled that the accused here do not have a say on how the police should investigate the case, the court has also added that the case is not merely of dissent or different political views.
According to reports, CJI Deepak Mishra has stated that the plea of petitioners that there is no evidence against the arrested persons is seriously disputed. He also added that since the main accused persons have already resorted to legal remedies, the SC refrains from dealing with the case at this stage.
The Pune Police had conducted raids and arrested the five accused last month. The arrested persons were accused of links with Maoists networks. The arrests were in relation to the Bhima Koregaon violence. Earlier, the Pune police had arrested Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut and Sudhir Dhavle in the case. The arrested persons in August raids had moved to the Supreme court and had obtained an order for house arrest instead of judicial custody.
The Pune police had clarified that the arrests have been done keeping the MHA in the loop and they had also taken IB inputs in their investigations. The police had also unearthed an incriminating letter from one of the raids which spoke of an assassination plot targetting PM Narendra Modi.