THE BOMBAY High Court on Wednesday granted bail to activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale, both of whom were arrested in the Elgaar Parishad case in 2018, on grounds of long incarceration without trial.
With this, of the 16 arrested in the case—initially by the Pune police in 2018 and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2020—nine are out of jail. While Father Stan Swamy passed away in custody in 2021, six still remain in custody, including Mahesh Raut, who was granted bail by the Bombay High Court in September 2023, but remains behind bars as his bail plea is pending before the Supreme Court.
Those released
Before this, activist-journalist Gautam Navlakha was granted bail in May 2024, following an order of the Supreme Court while noted that the trial will not conclude anytime soon. Navlakha was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on December 19, 2023, but he remained behind bars as the order was stayed to allow NIA to appeal in the Supreme Court.
In April 2024, activist and former Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen, was also granted bail, on the ground that she was in custody for over six years and the trial has not commenced. The NIA then did not oppose her bail, when asked by the court if her continued detention was necessary.
The first person to be released on bail in the case was Telugu poet P Varavara Rao, 82, on medical grounds for six months in February 2021. Though his bail was extended from time-to-time, HC rejected his plea for permanent bail in April 2022. In August 2022, the SC granted him bail on medical grounds since he had already spent over two years as an undertrial.
Lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj was granted default bail by the Bombay High Court on December 1, 2021, over three years after her arrest. In 2019, the HC rejected her bail plea, but her subsequent plea was allowed on the grounds that her detention was illegal since the court that had granted Pune police an extension to file a chargesheet under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act did not have the power to do so.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
