The Supreme Court should not have entertained the petition filed against the arrest of the five activists arrested for suspected Maoist links, the centre told the top court on Monday, backing up the Maharashtra police that had arrested them in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence earlier this year.

The centre said the magistrate concerned should have been looking into the grievance of the five activists, if any, against the arrest rather than the country’s top court.

Several people including historian Romila Thapar had filed a petition in the Supreme Court last month challenging the August 28 arrests of lawyer and trade unionist Sudha Bhardwaj, Telugu poet P Varavara Rao, activist Gautam Navlakha, and lawyers Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves.

She had alleged the arrests were aimed at muzzling dissent.

The top court had ordered the police to place the activists under house arrest rather than send them to jail till further orders.

Pune Police had claimed that the arrest of the five activists was part of a probe into a conclave called Elgar Parishad in Pune on December 31, 2017, when activists and Dalit organisations came together and conspired to trigger violence the next day in Bhima Koregaon, where Hinduta activists and Dalits clashed.

As carried in HT