SC adjourns Bhima Koregaon case to Sept 17, five activists to remain under house arrest
New Delhi, Sept 12 (IBNS) : The Supreme Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing in the Bhima Koregaon case to September 17, thus extending the period of house arrest of the five activists who were arrested in connection with the case, reports said.
The court was hearing a petition that challenged the arrests of these activists by the Maharashtra Police. Both sides asked for more time to file additional documents. An intervention application was also filed on behalf of five activists arrested in June – Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale.
On August 28, the Pune Police raided the homes of 10 human rights activists across the country and arrested five of them – Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao and Sudha Bharadwaj.
The following day, the Supreme Court ordered that they be placed under house arrest until September 6 though it observed that . “Dissent is the safety valve of democracy,"
The court also came down heavily on the police for briefing the media even when the case was sub judice.
The court passed the order after historian Romila Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociology professor Satish Deshpandey and human rights lawyer Maja Daruwala filed a petition seeking the immediate release of the activists and an independent investigation into the allegedly arbitrary arrests.
During the last hearing on September 6, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, extended their house arrest till September 12 and adjourned the matter.
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