scorecardresearch
Friday, March 29, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeIndiaGovernanceBhima-Koregaon arrests: Urgent hearing in SC for activists after midnight drama

Bhima-Koregaon arrests: Urgent hearing in SC for activists after midnight drama

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Next hearing in Supreme Court on arrest of the five people — Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha and Vernon Gonsalves — is at 3.45pm.

New Delhi: A team of high-profile activists, including historian Romila Thapar, moved the Supreme Court Wednesday morning against the arrest of five activists by Pune police Tuesday for alleged Maoist links.

The arrests were part of a nationwide crackdown carried out in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence this January.

The legal team of the activists that moved the Supreme Court, seeking an urgent hearing, raised the matter before a Constitution bench.

The Chief Justice of India-led bench had gathered for a hearing on reservations in promotions, and asked Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who raised the matter, to present it before a regular bench at 3.45 pm Wednesday.

The arrests of the five activists for alleged Maoist links — Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao (Hyderabad), and activists Sudha Bharadwaj (Faridabad), Arun Ferreira (Mumbai), Gautam Navlakha (Delhi) and Vernon Gonsalves (Mumbai) — stoked outrage Tuesday as the opposition and activists labeled the exercise a crackdown on the government’s critics. The homes of four others were raided too.


Also read: Arun Ferreira – Arrested cartoonist has already suffered enough at hands of anti-Naxal cell


Legal teams representing the activists kicked into high gear soon after the arrests, moving different high courts to seek respite.

While the Delhi High Court stayed the transit remand for Navlakha and placed him under house arrest until Wednesday, when the case is due to come up for hearing, Bharadwaj’s plea stoked a suspenseful turn of events where she was briefly reported to have gone under the radar while in the custody of Pune police.

Midnight drama

Bharadwaj was placed under house arrest in the small hours of Wednesday after a bizarre midnight drama at the residence of a local judge.

Pune police arrested Bharadwaj from her Badarpur home in the morning. What followed were multiple twists as two courts weighed in on Pune police’s demand for her transit custody.

The Faridabad chief judicial magistrate granted police’s plea in an evening hearing at his house, minutes after the Punjab and Haryana High Court, approached by Bharadwaj’s team against the detention, adjourned the hearing on the case till Thursday.

Pune police then whisked Bharadwaj away from the CJM’s home, and took her to an unknown location, with acquaintances reportedly having little knowledge of her whereabouts.


Also read: Pune Police ‘finds letter’ which talks of assassinating PM Modi


Around midnight, Bharadwaj was seen held in a Toyota Innova stationed on a dimly lit road outside the house of the CJM in Sector 15A, Faridabad. CJM Ashok Kumar first summoned Pune and Surajkund police inside his residence without any lawyers present.

Initially, Bharadwaj’s lawyer Vrinda Grover was asked to make her submissions in the CJM’s driveway. After addressing the judge briefly, Grover sought permission to make her full submissions in an appropriate manner since the driveway was an inconvenient place to show any documents. The CJM agreed, and invited Grover inside, where she waited as Bharadwaj stayed outside in the vehicle.

After hearing the two sides, the CJM visited the district judge at his residence for advice on the matter. On his return, around 1 am, the CJM ordered Bharadwaj to remain under house arrest till 30 August, when the high court takes up the matter.

The case

How the five activists are linked to the Elgaar Parishad, an event to commemorate Dalit participation in a British war against Marathas that was held in Pune on 31 December 2017, was not immediately clear.

According to a report in The Indian Express, it is believed that charges against the five stem from earlier arrests made in a case filed by a Pune resident accusing activists of peddling “provovative” content at the event, which was at the root of the Bhima-Koregaon violence.

The Delhi High Court and the Punjab and Haryana High Court came to Navlakha and Bharadwaj’s rescue primarily on the grounds that the punchnama and seizure memo filed by police were in Marathi – a language neither activist knows. The Delhi High Court also noted that Pune police had failed to clarify the exact charge against Navlakha.

The searches conducted at the duo’s residences reportedly did not yield anything incriminating either.

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

2 COMMENTS

  1. The CJM’s conduct is intriguing – familiarity with the English language allows one to convey meaning without risking contempt. 2. This is the first reported instance where a judicial officer has met a superior for “ advice “ while a case was live before his court. Imagine a High Court judge visiting the residence of a Supreme Court judge in the middle of the night in similar circumstances. 3. There would be a case for Ms Vrinda Grover to raise this issue before the high court, in order that judicial note may be taken of the CJM’s manner of dealing with this case.

  2. The caste system is both a historical truth and a modern reality no matter how much we defend our position that India has changed for the better, Dalits have always been at the bottom of the caste system.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular