The Supreme Court Wednesday extended the house arrest of five activists in connection with the Koregaon-Bhima case by a day, saying it would look into the case with a hawk's eye as liberty cannot be "sacrificed at the altar of conjectures".
The top court told the Maharashtra government that there should be a clear-cut distinction between opposition and dissent on one hand and attempts to create disturbance, law and order problems or overthrow the government on the other.
"Our institutions must be robust enough to accommodate any dissent or opposition to the system or even to this court. We cannot sacrifice liberty at the altar of conjectures,"a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.
The apex court extended till tomorrow the house arrest of the five rights activists --Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha-- at their respective homes.
During the hearing, it asked the Maharashtra government to place before it the "best documents available" as most of the material referred by it were "more like conjectures."
The bench, while referring to the documents submitted by the state government, pointed out that it has been said that students of a reputed university were at the site. "Your documents name a reputed university and a prominent social science institute."
At this, the bench said "our system should be robust enough to deal such international seminars."