It’s more than a week as the five rights activists are under house arrest in links with the Bhima-Koregaon violence. The Top Court on Thursday is slated to resume the hearing in the case. Earlier the apex court on August 29 had ordered the house arrest till September 6 as it disagreed citing “safety valve” of democracy.

The Maharashtra police on August 28 had held raids and arrested 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 New Delhi. The raids were taken place as part of an investigation into an event called Elgar Parishad, or Congress, on December 31 in 2017, which had later triggered agitation at Koregaon-Bhima village in Pune district of Maharashtra.

The state police filed an affidavit in response to a plea of historian Romila Thapar and four others( Economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociology professor Satish Deshpandey and human rights lawyer Maja Daruwala) challenging the seizure of the five activists in link with the case. Police claimed they were planning to carry out violence in the nation and were ready for the surprise attack on the security forces. The police said the activists were under arrest as there was well-argued evidence linking them with the banned CPI(Maoist) and not because of their rebellious views.