The SC bench of then CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud by a 2:1 majority had said that evidence produced by Pune police suggested that the rights activists were arrested not for their dissent against the ruling dispensation but for their alleged links with members of the banned CPI (Maoist).
Within days of the verdict, Thapar, Devaki Jain, Prabhat Patnaik, Satish Deshpande and Maja Daruwala had filed a petition through advocate Prashant Bhushan seeking review of the verdict, in which Justice Chandrachud, while strongly dissenting, had said that dissent is the "safety valve" in a democracy and its muzzling could lead to the bursting of the pressure cooker.
Since Justice Misra has retired, the review petition was taken up for consideration in chamber by a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Khanwilkar and Chandrachud. As is the norm in consideration of review petitions in chamber, no advocate from either side was present during the proceedings and the order was uploaded on the SC website on Saturday. It rejected the plea for fresh oral arguments on the petition in open court.
The CJI-led bench's order said: "We have perused the review petition as well as the grounds in support thereof. In our opinion, no case for review of judgment dated September 28, 2018 is made out. The review petition is accordingly dismissed."
Penning the majority view in the September 28 judgment, Justice Khanwilkar had continued the court's August 29 order to keep the activists under house arrest for four more weeks to enable them move the appropriate forum for bail or quashing of the case registered against them.
However, Justice Chandrachud had accepted the petitioners' arguments and said it was a fit case for ordering an SC-monitored SIT probe. He had said that liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjectures and castigated police for deliberately leaking defamatory material through the media to malign the reputation of the arrested persons.
But the majority judgment had given freedom to the investigating officer of Pune police to proceed with the probe on the FIR registered against the five arrested activists. It had rejected Thapar-led petitioners' plea for an SIT probe headed by a retired SC judge. The petitioners had alleged that the probe by police was misdirected and that evidence was being fabricated against the activists.
from Times of India https://ift.tt/2PV8Z49
