Breaking:Not A Case Of Arrest For Dissent, SC Turns Down Plea For SIT In Bhima Koregaon Case By 2:1 Majority, Chandrachud.J Dissents [Read Judgment]

The Supreme Court on Friday, in a majority judgment authored by Justice A. M. Khanwilkar on behalf of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and himself, declined the prayer for a SIT probe into the Bhima-Koregaon violence and the chain of events leading to it.The judgment was rendered on a PIL filed by historian Romila Thapar and four other eminent persons challenging the alleged-unlawful arrest on August 28 of five activists, namely, Gautam Navalakha, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, P. Varavara Rao and Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj. Subsequently, four of these accused have also filed a supplementary affidavit seeking impleadment before the apex court.In view of the same, the court assumed that the writ petition has now been pursued by the accused themselves and was of the opinion that the petition, at the instance of the next friend of the accused for an independent probe or a court-monitored investigation, cannot be countenanced, much less as a PIL as the petitioners cannot be heard to ask for the reliefs which otherwise cannot be granted to the accused themselves.Placing reliance on the material gathered in the course of the ongoing investigation by the Maharashtra police which, “according to them (the police), indicates complicity of the said accused in the commission of crime”, The court rejected the claim of the lack of any evidence against the accused- “Upon perusal of the said material, we are of the considered opinion that it is not a case of arrest because of mere dissenting views expressed or difference in the political ideology of the named accused, but concerning their link with the members of the banned organisation [CPI (M)] and its activities. This is not the stage where the efficacy of the material or sufficiency thereof can be evaluated nor it is possible to enquire into whether the same is genuine or fabricated....”Last week, ASG Tushar Mehta had drawn the bench’s attention to several pieces of communication exchanged between the activists, recovered from their laptops, harddisks, pen drives and memory cards- “uncertainty is growing....the enemy forces are strengthening....we are in the process of regrouping and deploying more guards....we need to increase our strength in this region as we have suffered a major setback here....we are waiting for information to gauge the strength of the enemy forces, the ROP (Road Opening Party) shall go before we launch the attack....”He had indicated the mention of guerrilla warfare and Low Intensity Conflict (LIC).The ASG had quoted the talk about “transfer of funds towards the expenditure of further operations” and the supply of some other material which he deliberately refrained from naming. He showed that an activist lawyer, who was subsequently arrested, was being scolded for having been unable to arrange the funds and that the advocate even offered a justification.He had referred to a statement in the communications recovered that “there are less enemy forces in these six regions and we will find it easier to ambush”. “Four of these places were actually ambushed!”, he corroborated.A few exchanges the ASG cited were in Hindi-“in the previous attack, 10-12 members of our group were killed. This will affect the morale of others. So go and say that those died were ‘Adivasis’ (tribals)”“Congratulations for worsening the enemy’s scenario and killing 25 members of their camp”In the light of this incriminatory material, the Case Diary and other documents tendered to the bar in sealed covers and the counter-affidavit filed by the state of Maharashtra, the judgment records, “The sum and substance of the reply affidavit is that sufficient material has become available during the investigation, which is still in progress, to indicate the complicity of the concerned accused who have been arrested including the five named persons in respect of whom the present writ petition has been filed by third parties. They are arrested not because of their political activities but for their involvement in the planning and execution of offences to destabilize the society and their association with the banned organization. Their involvement is noticed in selecting and encouraging cadres in the banned organizations to go underground in “struggle area‟, mobilizing and distributing money, facilitating selection and purchase of arms, deciding the rates of such arms and suggesting the routes and ways of smuggling such arms into India for its onward distribution amongst the cadres. Some of them have suggested training and laying booby traps and directional mines. Their involvement is also for providing strategic inputs in furtherance of the objective of armed rebellion, on lines of strategic documents of the banned terrorist organisation”“In the present case, except pointing out some circumstances to question the manner of arrest of the five named accused sans any legal evidence to link them with the crime under investigation, no specific material facts and particulars are found in the petition...

Breaking:Not A Case Of Arrest For Dissent, SC Turns Down Plea For SIT In Bhima Koregaon Case By 2:1 Majority, Chandrachud.J Dissents [Read Judgment]

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