New Delhi, Oct 24: The Supreme Court has refused an early hearing on a review petition that challenged the order refusing an SIT probe into the arrests of five activists said to be close to naxalites.
The original petitioner in the case, Romila Thapar had filed a review against the order of Supreme Court, which had refused to hand over the probe into the Bhima-Koregaon violence case to the Special Investigating Team.
Romila Thapar and Devki Jain, Prabhat Patnaik, Satish Deshpande and Maya Daruwala had challenged the arrest of the activists by the Pune Police after raids across five states on August 28. Also Read | Does the govt even know 'what urban naxal' means, asks Romila Thapar The state police said there was sufficient evidence to "dispel" the claim that they were arrested for their dissenting views. It also questioned the locus of the petitioners, Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociologist Satish Deshpande and legal expert Maja Daruwala, and said they were "strangers" to the investigation in the matter. Sudha Bhardwaj, P Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha, and lawyers and activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves were arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy. The government said that the cogent evidence has so far shown that these persons are part of banned terrorist organisation Communist Party of India (Maoist). There has been serious criminal offences made out against them and incriminating material has also emerged, the Maharashtra government said.