HC not to proceed with hearing plea against arrest of activist Gautam Navlakha for now

The Delhi High Court today said it will not proceed with hearing of the plea against the arrest of rights activist Gautam Navlakha till further orders from the Supreme Court, which had yesterday directed that all the five activists, arrested on August 28, be kept under house arrest till September 6.

A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel said it would not be appropriate to proceed further in the matter in view of the apex court's order, which was placed before it today, and listed the plea against Navlakha's arrest on September 14.

It also said that all the documents, after translating them from Marathi, be provided to the petitioner's lawyers by then.

Advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan, appearing for the activist, said the top court has not gone into the issue of transit remand, nor interdicted the proceedings in the high court and hence, the bench can proceed with examining the legality of the transit order issued by the magisterial court on August 28 for taking Navlakha to Pune.

Maharashtra Police wanted to take the activist to a Pune court in connection with a case relating to the Bhima-Koregaon violence of December last year.

The court did not agree with Ramakrishnan and said any order it passes "would be a complete contradiction" to the apex court's decision.

The bench had yesterday questioned the Maharashtra Police for not providing all documents, translated from Marathi, to the court as well as Navlakha, who was arrested for alleged unlawful activities, saying "every minute of a person put into custody is a matter of concern."
If the state police could not complete translation of Marathi documents, how could the trial court pass the transit remand order within a few minutes, it had said, adding "the practical issue is, if the court could not understand what is there in the documents, how could the remand order be passed."