Justice Chandrachud said dissent is the safety valve in the pressure cooker of democracy and it cannot be muzzled by brute force of police. (Express Photo By Amit Mehra) Justice Chandrachud said dissent is the safety valve in the pressure cooker of democracy and it cannot be muzzled by brute force of police. (Express Photo By Amit Mehra)

Striking a dissent note with the majority judgment, Justice D Y Chandrachud Friday said the arrest of five activists in the Elgaar Parishad case was an attempt by the State to muzzle dissent, and dissent is a symbol of a vibrant democracy. He added their arrests warranted for a “court-monitored probe” and liberty cherished by the Constitution would have no meaning if persecution of the five activists is allowed without proper investigation.

On Friday, in a 2-1 verdict, the bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, comprising of Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice Chandrachud refused to interfere with the arrest of the five activists and rejected the demand for a court-monitored probe in the matter. The apex court further directed that the activists, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Gautam Navlakha would remain under house arrest for four additional weeks. However, the three-judge bench said they could move the trial court for relief. Rejecting the petition seeking the immediate release of the activists, the bench said the arrests were not due to “dissent and differences in ideology”.

Disagreeing with the judgment, Justice Chandrachud lashed out at Maharashtra police for holding a press meet and distributing the letter related to the case to the media. Further, he stated that the letters allegedly written by activist Sudha Bharadwaj were flashed on TV channels and the police selectively disclosing the details of the probe to the media “casts a cloud on the fair probe.”

He said dissent is the safety valve in the pressure cooker of democracy and it cannot be muzzled by brute force of police.

Justice Chandrachud said the petition was genuine. He also said this was a fit case for appointing a Special Investigation Team (SIT) monitored by the apex court.

Citing a case of wrongful arrest of scientist Nambi Narayan in ISRO spy case, Justice Chandrachud said the top court must step in when an investigation appears to be unfair.

The activists have been under house arrest since the Maharashtra Police arrested them on August 28 while probing an alleged Maoist link to a meeting of the Elgaar Parishad in Pune on the eve of the January 1 violence in Bhima Koregaon. The Supreme Court had reserved its order on September 20.

Earlier while hearing the plea filed by historian Romila Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociology professor Satish Deshpande and human rights lawyer Maja Daruwala, the top court had said it would order a SIT probe if it found that the evidence has been “cooked up”. The petitioners had argued that the arrests were “random” and made to “stifle dissent”.

Meanwhile, according to the Maharashtra Police, material recovered from six alleged Maoist cadres arrested before the five were held had thrown up “concrete material requiring and justifying” the arrests.

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