Maharashtra government moves SC against HC order ending activist Gautam Navlakha's house arrest

NEW DELHI: The Maharashtra government moved the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a stay of Delhi high court’s Monday order ending the house arrest of activist Gautam Navlakha. The petition was filed by state counsel Nitish Katneswarkar.

A high court bench comprising Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel, had on Monday, set aside the magistrate’s order granting transit remand of the arrested activist and ended his house arrest.

The high court had held that the magistrate had not sought the case diaries of the investigations while applying his mind on transit remand for police. Maharashtra police has urged the top court to stay this order.


Navlakha is the first of the five activists, arrested recently in connection with their Maoist links during the Bhima Koregaon probe, to get any court relief.

The others are lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj, journalist Gautam Naulakha, poet Varavara Rao, lecturer Vernon Gonsalves and lawyer and human rights activist Arun Ferriera. The top court had initially ordered that they should be kept under house arrest till it decides the case.

Eventually though the top court had ruled that it was not a case of arrest over dissent and refused to go beyond the penal statute to set them free. Instead it had directed that the arrested move the appropriate courts for relief. The first of such petitions was filed Navlakha. The high Court had granted him relief on a habeas corpus petition filed in cases of illegal custody.

Now, Maharashtra police have appealed against that decision on the ground that when suspects are rounded up from many jurisdictions it was not possible to produce their case diaries.