Delhi HC says activist Gautam Navlakha to be released from house arrest

The Delhi High Court on Monday cleared the way for human rights activist Gautam Navlakha to be released from house arrest in Delhi, saying his detention was “untenable” in law.

Navlakha was among the five rights activists who were arrested by the Maharashtra police in country-wide raids on August 28 for their alleged links with a banned Maoist group. The Supreme Court put them under house arrest the next day, prohibiting the police from taking them to Pune.

The Delhi High Court this evening said the transit remand the police had got from a lower court to detain Navlakha was “unsustainable” because it didn’t meet the requirements of law and the Constitution.

Lawyer and trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj, Telugu poet P Varavara Rao, activist Gautam Navlakha, and lawyers Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves were arrested on August 28 in country-wide raids for alleged links with Left-wing rebels called Naxals or Maoists.

But on a petition by historian Romila Thapar that linked the police crackdown to the strong views of the activists, the Supreme Court had ordered the police to place the five under house arrest rather than send them to jail.

The Supreme Court eventually declined to grant any relief to the five activists, ruling that the arrest appeared to have been prompted by their alleged link to a banned organisation and not dissent or their political ideology.

First Published: Oct 01, 2018 16:52 IST