The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case. A division bench of Justice Ajay Gadkari and Justice Shivkumar Dighe passed the order.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) urged the court to stay operation of the order for a period of six weeks so that it could file an appeal in the Supreme Court. The court partially accepted NIA's demand, granting a stay of 3 weeks for implementation.
Navlakha, who was arrested in August 2018, was in November last year permitted by the apex court to be placed under house arrest. He is residing in Navi Mumbai at present. The high court granted Navlakha bail on a surety of Rs 1 lakh. He is the seventh accused in the case to be granted bail.
In April this year, a special court had refused to grant bail to Navlakha, saying that there was prima facie evidence to show that the activist was an active member of banned outfit CPI (Maoist), as reported by news agency PTI. In his appeal filed in the high court, Navlakha said the special court had erred while refusing bail to him.
This is Navlakha's second round of appeal in the high court seeking regular bail. He had earlier moved to the high court after his regular bail plea was rejected by the special NIA court in September last year.
According to PTI, the probe agency had then opposed Navlakha's bail plea, claiming that he had been introduced to a Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) General for his recruitment, which shows his nexus with the organisation.
The high court had, however, opined that the reasoning in the order of the special court was cryptic and did not contain an analysis of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution's view of this. The high court had ruled that the bail application required a fresh hearing by the special court and had remanded the case back to the court.
It had also ordered the special judge to conclude the hearing within four weeks. Accordingly, Navlakha had moved the special court for the rehearing of his case. The plea was re-heard by the special court on the same pleadings, which rejected the bail plea, prompting the present appeal.
Elgar Parishad Case
The case pertains to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017 which according to the police triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city. As many as 16 activists have been arrested in the case of which five are currently out on bail.
Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferrira and Mahesh Raut are out on regular bail, while poet Varavara Rao is currently out on bail on health grounds. Navlakha is the seventh accused to be granted bail in this case, as reported by PTI.
(With Inputs from Mrityunjay)