The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to activist Gautam Navlakha, a figure in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
Navlakha's bail plea was approved by the division bench, led by Justice A S Gadkari. While the National Investigation Agency (NIA) requested a stay on the order for six weeks to file an appeal in the Supreme Court, the bench granted a stay for three weeks.
Arrested in August 2018 and later placed under house arrest by the Supreme Court in November last year, Navlakha currently resides in Navi Mumbai.
The high court granted him bail on a surety of Rs 1 lakh, making him the seventh accused in the case to receive bail. Earlier in April this year, a special court had denied bail to Navlakha, citing prima facie evidence of his active involvement with the banned outfit CPI (Maoist).
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.
Navlakha had earlier moved the high court after the special NIA court rejected his regular bail plea in September last year.
The NIA 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 analysis of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution's view of this. The high court had ruled that the bail application requires fresh hearing by the special court, and had remanded the case back to the court.
It had also directed the special judge to conclude the hearing within four weeks. Accordingly, Navlakha had moved the special court for re-hearing his case for regular bail.
The special court had then re-heard the plea on the same pleadings and rejected the bail plea prompting the present appeal.
The case involves speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the police claim led to violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.
Sixteen activists have been arrested in the case, and five are currently out on bail.
Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira 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.
