Justice Sarang Kotwal of Bombay High Court said on Thursday he knew that Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace was a literary classic and he did not mean to suggest that all the books seized by police in the Elgar Parishad-Koregaon Bhima case were incriminating.

The clarification by Justice Kotwal came a day after he asked accused Vernon Gonsalves to explain why he kept “objectionable material” like a copy of War and Peace at his home.

The court’s comments on Thursday came after the counsel for Gonsalves informed the judge that none of the books seized from the activist’s residence last year were banned by the government in accordance with CrPC provisions.

Justice Kotwal said: “I knew that Tolstoy’s War and Peace was a literary classic. I was reading the whole list from the panchnama attached to the chargesheet. It was written in such poor handwriting. I know War and Peace. And there I was making a query (on why Gonsalves had copies of these books) but did not want to suggest that everything was incriminating.”

On Wednesday, the court had asked Gonsalves: “War and Peace is about war in another country. Why were you keeping these books at your house?” The judge had also referred to a CD titled Rajya Daman Virodhi and said the title “clearly suggested” it is material against the state. “Why were you keeping this in your house?” he had asked Gonsalves.

On Thursday, Yug Chaudhary, the counsel for co-accused Sudha Bharadwaj, said the War and Peace that the court had referred to on Wednesday was a collection of essays edited by Calcutta-based journalist Biswajit Roy, titled War and Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists.

That book, according to its publishers, is a “collection of essays by well-known activists and academics, including mediators, and examines the failed peace initiatives in context of the governments’ elitist developmental policies, doublespeak of parliamentary parties and Maoists’ follies”.

The judge then said: “There were so many references to war and other titles. Before I went to War and Peace, I made a reference to Rajya Daman too. Can a judge not ask any questions in court?”

Gonsalves told the court that he owned 2,000 books and none of those, including the ones seized from his home by Pune police, was banned.

Gonsalves’s counsel Mihir Desai informed the court that the police were in possession of these allegedly incriminating books for a year now but had done nothing about it.

“These books that the police call incriminating are not banned under Section 95 of the Criminal Procedure Code. In fact, they are all available on (online retailer) Amazon,” Desai said.