Bombay HC Acquits Ex DU Professor G N Saibaba, Five Others In Maoist Links Case

The Bombay HC's Nagpur bench permitted the appeal filed by Saibaba challenging a 2017 order of the trial court that convicted him in the Maoist links case and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

New Delhi: The Bombay High Court's Nagpur bench on Friday acquitted former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba in an alleged Maoist links case, ordering his immediate release from jail. Saibaba, who is wheelchair-bound due to a physical disability, is currently lodged at the Nagpur central prison.

A division bench of Justice Rohit Deo and Anil Pansare permitted the appeal filed by Saibaba challenging a 2017 order of the trial court that convicted him in the Maoist links case and sentenced him to life imprisonment, news agency PTI reported.

The trial court had held Saibaba and the others guilty under various provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). 

As per PTI, the Nagpur bench today noted that the sanction order issued to prosecute the accused in the case under the stringent provisions of the UAPA was "bad in law and invalid".

Besides the ex DU professor, the bench also allowed the appeal of five other convicts in the case as it acquitted them. One of the five died pending a hearing of the appeal, PTI reported.

The bench noted that in 2014 when the trial court took cognisance of the chargesheet filed by the prosecution, there was no sanction to prosecute Saibaba under the UAPA.

The prosecution had alleged that the convicts were active members of the banned terrorist outfit CPI (Maoist) and its frontal organisation Revolutionary Democratic Front.

The court stated that the trial court proceedings were "null and void" in the absence of valid sanction under the UAPA and hence the judgment (of the trial court) was liable to be set aside and quashed.

"While the war against terror must be waged by the State with unwavering resolve, and every legitimate weapon in the armory must be deployed in the fight against terror, a civil democratic society can ill afford sacrificing the procedural safeguards legislatively provided, and which is an integral facet of the due process of law, at the altar of perceived peril to national security," the judgment said, as quoted by PTI.

The bench directed for the convicts to be released forthwith from jail unless they are accused in any other case.

In March 2017, a sessions court in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district convicted Saibaba and others, including a journalist and a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student for alleged Maoist links and for indulging in activities amounting to waging war against the country.

(With Agency Inputs)