The court asked the Maharashtra police to file their case diary pertaining to the ongoing investigation in the case by September 24.
According to a media report published on Saturday, only one of the outfits to which eight of the arrested activists belonged was declared as unlawful.
Maharashtra Police had on August 28 raided the homes of the prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for their alleged Maoist links, sparking a chorus of outrage from human rights defenders.
The bench, which also comprised Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, told the Maharashtra government to make its police officials "more responsible" on matters pending before the court.
The Pune Police had moved the court Saturday for extension of the 90-day period for filing chargesheet against the five persons, citing fresh arrests in the case.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to interfere in the arrest of five rights activists in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence case and declined to appoint a SIT for probe into their arrest.
The callousness with which these political dissidents are being treated goes against the Supreme Court's directive, given right at the beginning of the lockdown. The apex court had directed states to release prisoners to decongest jails, which had become hotspots of the coronavirus.
The apex court also rejected the plea to appoint a Special Investigation Team for probe.
The law permits a person to approach the police or a magistrate to lodge a complaint and get their grievances addressed, the court noted.
'If we accept this, then in a few years we will not see a democratic India that we know'
Till late Sunday night, the 84-year-old Jesuit priest was on ventilator support, the senior counsel told PTI. Swamy has been undergoing treatment at the Holy Family Hospital in Mumbai, following a court order on May 28.
"How can the police do this? The matter is sub judice. The Supreme Court is seized of the matter. In such cases, revealing information pertaining to the case is wrong," Justice Bhatkar said.
'That is how our machinery operates and sees every prisoner.'
Do Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray, Sanjay Raut, and Sharad Pawar want the deaths of the Bhima Koregaon accused to be associated with their regime? asks Jyoti Punwani.
He took up the causes of tribals marginalised after their lands has been taken over for dams, mines and townships, often without their consent.
None of them had anything to do with the violence at Bhima Koregaon, where they were not even present, points out Aakar Patel.
The court was hearing the plea filed against the arrest of the rights activists -- Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha -- in the case.
'Father Stan was concerned about other innocents who may be implicated and put inside without the slightest proof, the way he was.'
'These charges of the prosecution will fall to the ground and I am 100 per cent sure of that.'
The larger conspiracy of Communist Party of India-Maoists was to overthrow the democratic system in the country, and the accused were working in that direction, the chargesheet claimed.
District and Sessions Judge K D Vadane sent the two activists to police custody after district government pleader and public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar argued in the court that since all the accused were under house arrest as per the Supreme Court's directions, they could not be interrogated in connection with the case.
The prosecution, while opposing the bail applications, had argued that they have "corrborative evidence" against the accused to prove their involvement in Maoist activities, such as mobilising cadres, recruiting students from eminent institutes and sending them to the interior to become "professional revolutionaries", raise funds and procure weapons.
On the last date of hearing, the Maharashtra police had produced additional letters to establish Moist links of the arrested accused even as the petitioners described it as cooked-up evidence.
The judge said 'such books' and CDs prima facie indicated they contained some material against the state.
Teltumbde later termed the police's case against him and several other social activists as 'harassment' and a ploy to 'humiliate' them.
Fadnavis said the decision of the top court proved that there was no conspiracy behind action by the state police against Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha.
'Such a serious threat -- to assassinate the prime minister of India, no less -- was not handed over to the Maharashtra Anti Terrorist Squad for investigation, but to the Pune crime branch.' 'So much for seriousness in tackling such a grave issue,' says N Suresh.
The letter was seized during nationwide raids conducted by the Pune police in connection with the case following which these activists were arrested, he said.
Yug Chaudhary, counsel for co-accused Sudha Bahrdwaj, then told the court that the War and Peace that the court had referred to on Wednesday was a collection of essays edited by one Biswajit Roy, and was titled War and Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's carping ally said the police assertion about security threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Maoists was just a 'conspiracy theory'.
Talking to reporters in Kolhapur, Pawar said it was not right on the part of the Centre to hand over the probe into the case, which was with the Pune police, to the NIA as law and order was a state subject. NCP leader and Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said Uddhav Thackeray had overruled him on the probe in the case.
Following the intervention of a bench of Justices S S Shinde and Madhav Jamdar, the state said it will shift Rao, 81, who is lodged as an under-trial in the Taloja prison in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, to the Nanavati Hospital as a 'special case'.
Will the latest development see a marked break from the way the case has been going?
On January 1 in 2018, violence erupted at an event to mark 100 years of the Bhima-Koregaon battle, leaving one dead and several injured, including 10 policemen.
The Delhi high court freed Navlakha from house arrest on Monday, five weeks after he and four other rights activists were arrested in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima violence in Maharashtra.
Varavara Rao reached home in Hyderabad on Thursday morning, while activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, were sent to Mumbai by road.
Some of the letters exchanged between the arrested activists spoke of planning 'some big action' which would attract attention, Singh said.
'Anybody and everybody who opposes this government for whatever reasons will be branded a terrorist and charged in such a manner that all human rights will be taken away.'
'Investigating agencies are not acting as independent authorities; they have stopped being neutral.'
The top court directed the Maharashtra government to place before it the material which was collected during the investigation against Navlakha and placed before the high court in a sealed cover.
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