SC orders house arrest in interim relief for 5 activists, no police custody

The Pune police's bid for immediate custody of the five noted rights activists arrested yesterday for suspected Maoist links was today halted by the Supreme Court which ordered they be kept under house arrest till September 6.

The interim relief for the five people that spared them the prospect of being sent to jail or police custody for now came on a day of multiple court battles after the pan India crackdown on Left-wing activists even as the apex court observed that "dissent is the safety valve of democracy".

Pune police yesterday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested five of them -- poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and Chhattisgarh and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in Delhi.

The raids were carried out as part of a probe into a conclave -- Elgar Parishad -- held in Koregaon-Bhima near Pune on December 31 last year, which had allegedly triggered violence the next day.

Shortly after the apex court order by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, a Pune court directed the city police to send the arrested human rights activists back to their homes.

Rao, Ferreira and Gonsalves were taken to Pune late last night while Bharadwaj is confined to her home in Faridabad and Navlakha to his Delhi residence,
Taking a strong note of the submissions of the state government, it said, "This (arrest) is a wider issue. Their (petitioners') problem is quelling dissent."