New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday extended the house arrest of five human rights activists, who were arrested from several cities in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence case, till September 20.A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud will continue with the hearing on Thursday on the plea filed by historian Romila Thapar and four others.Speaking during the hearing, the bench said that it would be looking into the matter with a “hawk’s eye”, and even asked the state of Maharashtra to show the best document against the activists. “Liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjectures,” Justice Chandrachud stated during the hearing, according to LiveLaw.ASG Tushar Mehta, appearing for Maharashtra, tried to show that the investigation into the Bhima Koregaon violence has been in compliance with the Code of Criminal Procedure.Justice Chandrachud also question Mehta on the police’s decision to take two Pune Municipal Corporation clerks along as witnesses during the raids and arrests. The ASG said this decision was taken as ‘pancha’ witnesses tend to turn hostile, and said that the clerks were responsible government servants who had not acted as witnesses before.The justice, Hindustan Times reported, told Mehta that a “clear-cut distinction” should be made “between opposition and attempts to create disturbance and overthrow governments” and advised the state to focus on material that proves the latter, if it has any.“Our institutions should be robust enough when there is an opposition to the system or even to this court. Then there has to be something different to constitute subversion of law and order as far as elected government is concerned,” Justice Chandrachud said.Mehta said, “Dissent is fine but it is also important who is saying it. If the leader of a banned outfit says it, this will have a different connotation. This court has to look after the liberty of all citizens and not just five.”Harish Salve, who was appearing for the petitioners, told the court, “Whether systematic breakdown of law and order is within permissible limits of dissent has to be seen. There was a difference between someone who is angry saying burn the Constitution and someone being part of an organisation which aims to create unrest trying to provoke,” Salve said. “A lot of it depends on who says and what is said and the context in which it is said.”At the last hearing in the case on September 17, the top court had said it may order a probe by a special investigating team (SIT) if it found that the evidence has been “cooked up”. It had also said that the material, supporting the arrest of the five activists in the case, needed to be examined.(With PTI inputs)