Delhi HC frees activist from house arrest

New delhi: the delhi high court on Monday ordered the release of human rights activist ga uta mn av lakhaf rom house arrest, saying his detention was “untenable” under law.

A bench of justices S. Muralidhar and Vinod Goel also set aside a lower court order allowing the Maharashtra Police to take Navlakha to Pune.

The high court bench, however, said that the Maharashtra Police is free to begin fresh proceedings in the matter against Navlakha, as per legal provisions.

Navlakha was among the ive rights activists arrested by the Maharashtra Police in a series of raids across the country on Aug.28 for their alleged links with a banned Maoist group.

Navlakha was arrested from his residence in south Delhi’s Nehru Enclave and presented before a magistrate’s court here, which allowed the police to present him before a court in Pune.

Subsequently, the high court directed the Maharashtra Police not to take Navlakha out of Delhi and keep him under house arrest until further orders.

The Supreme Court had on Sept.29 rejected a plea for immediate release of the ive rights activists, held in connection with the Koregaon-bhima violence case for alleged Maoist links.

Lawyer and trade union activist sud ha Bhardwaj, Telugu poet P. Varavara Rao, activist Gautam Navlakha, and lawyers Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves were arrested on Aug.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 ive under house arrest rather than send them to jail.