The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday will resume the hearing in the case of plea against five rights activists arrest in link with the Bhima-Koregaon violence in Maharashtra. The activists were detained by Pune police in August for their alleged link in the Bhima-Koregaon violence.
The Top court had extended the house arrest of well-known Left-wing activists who were held after Pune police conducted raids across a number of states as part of a investigation into anti-Dalit violence at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after the Elgar Parishad conclave on December 31, 2017 on September 6.The Supreme Court Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud on that day had criticized the Maharashtra government over state police media briefing on Bhima-Koregaon raids.
The Supreme Court on August 29 had ordered for the house arrest till September 6 observing that dissent was the “safety valve” of democratic system.
Earlier The Maharashtra police on August 28 had conducted raids and held well-known Telugu poet Varavara Rao from Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira from Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bharadwaj from Faridabad and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha from the national capital Delhi. The raids were carried out as part of an investigation into an alleged event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, held on December 31 in 2017. In this conclave due to provocative speech violence triggered at Koregaon-Bhima village in Pune district of Maharashtra.