New Delhi: Responding to the Supreme Court verdict that rejected the plea for an independent SIT probe in the case against the five activists who were arrested by the Maharashtra police in connection to the Bhima Koregaon violence earlier this year, the five petitioners said that the majority judgement, despite rejecting their prayer, upheld the right of the accused persons to exercise their rights to seek legal remedies over the next four weeks.However, they added that the counsels for the activists were still exploring the legal options and will be able to finalise a plan of action in the next few days.The three-judge bench extended the house arrest of the five civil liberties activists – Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, and Arun Ferreira – by four weeks. It was hearing the writ petition by historian Romila Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociologist Satish Deshpande, and senior human rights activist Maja Daruwala. The petition alleged that there may be political motives behind the police action against the well-known activists.“Our intention was to draw the attention of the judiciary to what we believe is a case of gross misuse of the state’s powers under draconian laws like the UAPA. Our history as republic shows that, if left unchecked, such misuse causes grave injustices and endangers the civil liberties of all Indians,” Thapar said, pointing out that the idea behind moving the court was not just to defend the activists but also to highlight the frequent abuse of stringent laws like the UAPA to target government’s critics.Thapar added, “…we believe that there are two kinds of terrorism, both of which create fear and undermine the foundations of our democracy: one, the violent act of those described as terrorists, who plant bombs, instigate people to be violent, engineer riots and deliberately spread fear through their acts; and two, the illegal or unjustified acts of state functionaries who, instead of pursuing the actual perpetrators of violence, misuse their powers to harass those who do not conform to the politics of their current masters.”Adding to this, Patnaik said, “The case is one of a preposterous accusation against activists who we know personally. But this preposterous accusation, in our view, is part of something preposterous that is going on in the country for quite some time.” Patnaik further said, when certain individuals are charged with such laws, the cases drag on for years and even if the police may not be able to prove any of these charges at the end, the individuals lose many years in prison. He said the police does not have to pay a price for slapping false charges while the people who are falsely charged remain incarcerated for years.He recommended that there should be a penalty clause for the police for such abuse of power. “There is no penalty – as far as the state is concerned – of the terrorism that is inflicted upon individuals,” he said.Deshpande intervened to say, “When the state uses anti-terror laws without adequate proof against persons known to be working for the rights of the weaker sections of society, it is also spreading a kind of terror. Arbitrary arrests on implausible charges, like those of August 28, are a source of anxiety for us all. They mean that the police can walk into our homes and arrest us – either without a warrant, or with a warrant written in a language we don’t understand – and then accuse us of activities about which we know nothing.”The petitioners asserted that their plea was upheld by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud in his dissenting opinion. Vrinda Grover, counsel for the petitioners, read aloud portions of the judgement where justice Chandrachud remarked strongly against the Maharashtra police and spoke of the need to have an SIT. Considering the way the state police had conducted itself until now, justice Chandrachud had said, there were sufficient reasons to doubt its capability to conduct a fair probe.“Our stand in this case finds vindication in the dissenting opinion of J. Dr. D.Y. Chandrchud who has categorically held that liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjecture, and that the police had been taking liberties with the truth and besmirching the reputation of the activists by doing a media trial. Under such circumstances, the police’s ability to conduct a free, fair and impartial investigation is in serious doubt, as has been held by J. Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud,” Grover said.Meanwhile, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis termed the SC verdict as a “great victory for the Pune police” and dismissed the allegation that the investigation was politically motivated. He said that even the SC acknowledged that the probe was not malafide.The petitioners, however, said that by extending the house arrest – which the high courts of Delhi and Punjab and Haryana granted to the activists and denied the Pune police demand to take them under remand – the SC had protected the “the liberty and dignity of the human rights activists for the time being.”“The very fact that the SC recognised and took cognisance of our petition itself is a matter of great significance. In other words, it actually said that these cannot just be treated as criminal cases,” Patnaik said. “And that there is a question of constitutional rights involved. This is really a historic turning point. If you look at the judgement today, if the SC would have viewed that these activists were actually Maoists, why did it give them four weeks of house arrest instead of putting them straight away in jail? It is because there is a certain ambiguity, certain reservation even within the majority verdict. The judgement makes it clear that you cannot really treat these persons as criminals.”