'Why did you hold press conference on activists' arrests?' Bombay HC asks Maharashtra Police

The Bombay High Court pulled up Maharashtra Police on Monday, asking it why it had held a press conference on the arrests of the five activists when the matter was sub judice.

The court was hearing a petition asking for the case to be handed over to the National Investigation Agency.

The court said the Supreme Court was "seized of the matter" and that in such a case, revealing information about the case was wrong.

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The petitioner told the court that the police,on one hand, wanted an in-camera trial while on the other it was holding press conferences on the arrest.

Pune Police had on August 28 arrested five activists after conducting raids in several states.

The lawyer and trade union activist Sudha Bharadwaj was arrested from her residence in Faridabad, Haryana. She practises at the Chhattisgarh High Court in Bilaspur.

The poet Varavara Rao was arrested from his home in Hyderabad.

The activists Arun Fereira and Vernon Gonsalves were arrested from Mumbai, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha from Delhi.

The government has since then got tremendous amounts of flack for the arrests, with several commentators saying the government is stepping down on any and all dissent.

Maharashtra Police later held a press conference where they released a letter saying some of the activists had been in touch with Naxals, and had been helping them procure arms and ammunition.

Police claimed they had thousands more documents of asimilar nature.

The activists and their families have said the letters (Maharashtra Police released a second letter subsequently) and the documents are forgeries.