New Delhi: The Supreme Court has dismissed an application filed by the National Investigation Agency, seeking that activist Gautam Navlakha’s shift to house arrest from a Mumbai prison be put on hold, orally warning the central agency that the court will take a serious view of attempts to “find loopholes” to claim the initial order has been defied.Navlakha has been in Taloja Jail since April 2020. He was first arrested in August 2018 in connection with the Elgar Parishad case, in which the incarceration of 16 prominent activists and scholars has been criticised globally and seen as a symbol of crackdown on dissent.The Supreme Court on November 10 allowed Navlakha to be placed under house arrest on account of his health, against a payment of Rs 2.4 lakh to cover the expenses of security while under house arrest.The NIA has attempted to raise safety concerns about the premises in Navi Mumbai where he had proposed to live during his house arrest.LiveLaw has reported that a bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy noted that Navlakha had complied with the condition of installing CCTV cameras at both exit points and engrafted additional conditions – like the sealing of a door leading to an exit and placing locks on some grills.Notably, the bench also said that the November 10 order to shift Navlakha must be executed in 24 hours.The bench took a dim view of the NIA’s objections, according to LiveLaw’s report.“If you are trying to find out some loopholes to see that our order is defied, we will take a very serious view of it…If with the entire police force you cannot keep a watch on a 70-year-old ailing man, then think about the weakness…please do not say such a thing. With all the might of the State, you are not able to keep a 70-year-old ailing man in house confinement,” the bench orally commented.Among arguments presented by Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta was the claim that Navlakha’s medical records were “biased” as his brother-in-law worked at the hospital which issued them.To this, Justice Joseph noted that the Additional Solicitor General, S.V. Raju, did argue this point.The NIA also objected to the fact that Navlakha’s residence and place of arrest would be a hall above the library of the Communist Party of India. The resultant exchange, according to LiveLaw, went thus:“Communist Party [of India] is a recognised party of India. What is the objection we cannot understand,” Justice Joseph asked.“If that does not shock this court, I will leave it at that,” SG said.“It certainly does not shock us,” Justice Joseph said.“A person accused of indulging in a serious terrorist act being a Maoist is staying at some political party’s office? What is this institution being driven to?” SG asked.The SG claimed that Navlakha had not disclosed the fact that the library belonged to the party. ASG Raju further stressed on the fact that the library belonged to a political party and sought to establish that this made it a place where “he can easily meet persons”, also citing that there was a karate class on the terrace.Senior advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan, counsel for Navlakha, noted that the library is run by the B.T. Ranadive Trust and said that “anybody with a basic political sense will know Communist Party of India is different from Maoists.”“Communist party itself condemns Maoists,” she said.The Hindu, in its report, noted that when discussions were being had on additional conditions on Navlakha’s house arrest, Ramakrishnan said her client was “neither a Houdini nor a trapeze artiste” to have the ability to walk out through a two-inch grill door.“She said the kitchen door to the outside was already locked and a second CCTV camera had been installed. The karate classes were discontinued,” the report said.Ramakrishnan presented that Navlakha was not an original resident of Mumbai and thus used a facility that was open to him.