On December, the Bombay High Court granted bail to activist Gautam Navlakha, who had been arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence case. The said order of allowing the bail plea of Navlakha was delivered by a division bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and S.G. Dige. Notably, he had been under house arrest in Navi Mumbai since November 2022. The bench imposed the same bail conditions on Navlakha as the co-accused Anand Teltumbde and Mahesh Raut, as per a report of Bar and Bench. It is essential to highlight here that Mahesh Raut, who had been granted bail in September, is yet to walk out of jail as his case remains pending in the Supreme Court.
It has been further been reported that the court also agreed to a three-week stay on its decision in which the National Investigation Agency can approach the Supreme Court. They urged the court to stay operation of the order for a period of six weeks. As per a report in Livemint, Navlakha has been granted bail on the surety of one lakh rupees.
The prosecution has relied on 336 witnesses in the case. The trial, however, is yet to commence. Recently, Navlakha was also named as an accused in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case filed in relation to the online portal NewsClick. Two people – Editor Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakraborty – have been arrested in that case. Journalists’ bodies from across the country have criticised the police action in the case as an attack on media freedom. As per the report of the Print, the Delhi Police had recently asked for an extension of three months to complete their investigation in the NewsClick case, and said that they would be questioning Navlakha on Wednesday.
Brief Background of the case
The said case pertains to alleged inflammatory speeches delivered at the ‘Elgar Parishad’ conclave, held at Shaniwarwada in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the police had claimed to have triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial, located on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city, located around 200km from Mumbai.
The Pune police, which probed the case initially, had claimed the conclave was backed by Maoists. The NIA later took over the probe into the case, in which more than a dozen activists and academicians were named as accused.
Navlakha, who is a human rights activist and former secretary of People’s Union for Democratic Rights, was arrested in August 2018, but was initially placed under house arrest. He has been booked under the stringent anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the alleged conspiracy behind the Bhima Koregaon violence of January 2018.
Navlakha has been in custody since April 14, 2020, in the Taloja Central Prison in Maharashtra, after the Supreme Court directed him to surrender before the NIA after rejecting his bail application. His plea seeking an extension to surrender in view of the Coronavirus pandemic was also rejected.
On September 5, 2022, a special NIA court judge Rajesh J Katariya had rejected the bail plea of Navlakha. The NIA had vehemently opposed Navlakha’s bail plea by claiming that he had been introduced to a Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) General for his recruitment, which shows his nexus with the organisation. They had also described him as a member of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist).
However, on November 10, the Supreme Court allowed his plea to be shifted back to house arrest for a month, albeit with rather stringent conditions. The bench of Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy, had noted that while charge sheet has been filed against Navlakha on October 9, 2020 no charges were yet framed against him and that he has been in custody as an under trial prisoner since April 14, 2020. The Supreme Court was also ‘mystified’ as to why the High Court did not consider Navlakha’s age (70) as a basis to consider his application for house arrest. This was extended by another month on December 13.
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