New Delhi
On the eve of the hearing on a petition challenging the arrest of five activists, the Maharashtra Police on Wednesday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court justifying the arrests in connection with Bhima-Koregaon violence and sought their custody for investigation.

The affidavit asserted that the activists were arrested not because of their dissenting views or ideology and that there was sufficient evidence to dispel the claim. In a pan-India crackdown on August 28, poet Varavara Rao was arrested in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and Chhattisgarh and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha in Delhi for suspected Maoist links.

Filed in response to a petition by historian Romila Thapar and four other prominent intellectuals challenging the arrests, the affidavit said evidence suggested they were active members of banned outfit CPI . It accused the activists of being involved in planning and preparing for violence. They were also in the process of creating large-scale violence, destruction of property resulting in chaos in society as per agenda prepared by CPI, banned since 2009, the affidavit stated.

The police questioned the locus standi of petitioners Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain, sociologist Satish Deshpande and Commonwealth human rights initiative senior adviser Maja Daruwala describing them as “strangers” to the case.