NEW DELHI: In a disquieting claim before the Supreme Court on Thursday, Pune police alleged that a letter recovered from one of five recently arrested activists revealed a plan to ambush security forces in six places by banned CPI (Maoist) cadre and that four attacks were actually carried out.Before a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud reserved verdict on a petition filed by historian Romila Thapar and four others challenging the arrests and demanding an SIT probe into “cooked up” charges, the police presented letters additional solictor general Tushar Mehta said were a “clear link between them and CPI (Maoist)”.The SC was hearing petitions alleging that arrests of activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Vernon Fernandes and Arun Ferreira were intended to stifle dissent against the BJP-led government. Reading from the submissions made by the Pune police, Mehta argued that the arrests have nothing to do with dissent. Referring to a document recovered from the computer of one of the activists, Mehta said it termed government forces as the “enemy” and talked of how to lower morale of security forces by ambushing them.He read out a portion asking the recipient to provide logistics support on force deployment and movement of road opening parties. “Please take note how the author of the letter is telling about cadre not being able to move freely because of checking by security forces and seeks guidance from the recipient on conducting bigger attacks. Please note the six places they are talking about carrying out an ambush on security forces, and actually four ambushes places took place,” Mehta said.Citing a 100-page document prepared by CPI (Maoist)’s eastern region bureau, Mehta said it spoke of intense propaganda to be carried out to brand killed cadre as innocent ‘adivasis’ (tribals) and at one point congratulated and boasted how “our cadre killed 25 of enemy forces”.“The arrests have nothing to do with dissent. Anyone can dissent against government policies, write articles and protest. But terming government forces as enemy is surely not dissent. Planning to ambush government forces can never be called dissent,” Mehta said. Appearing for the activists, senior advocate A M Singhvi sought to punch holes in the police narrative and said the documents are forged letters as one linked to Sudha Bharadwaj, who has no knowledge of Marathi, had typical Marathi words.He said these letters, which police claim to be top secret, were flashed on a TV channel and freely distributed by police to create a false narrative about activists and muzzle their dissent. Harish Salve , counsel for the complainant, said let individual criminal cases be not mixed up with what some say —“your terrorists are our freedom fighters”.He said broad contours of free speech cannot be a license for committing unlawful activities. The SC asked both sides to submit their written submissions by Monday.