The Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday the interim bail plea of Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami in the 2018 case of alleged abetment to suicide of an interior designer.
Within hours of filing of Goswami's appeal against the Bombay High Court's rejection of his bail, the apex court registry listed it for hearing by a vacation bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Indira Banerjee.
Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami moved the Supreme Court Tuesday seeking interim bail in the 2018 case of alleged abetment to suicide of an interior designer.
The Bombay High Court had refused to grant interim bail to Goswami and two others on Monday and asked them to move to the local court for the relief.
The appeal against the high court order has been filed in the top court through lawyer Nirnimesh Dubey.
Besides the Maharashtra government, Goswami who is in Taloja jail, has made the Centre, the SHO of Alibaug police station, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh and Akshyata Anvay Naik as parties to his appeal.
The state government, through advocate Sachin Patil, has also filed a caveat in the top court to ensure that no order is passed on Goswami's plea without it being heard in the case.
Goswami and the two others were arrested by Alibaug police in Maharashtra's Raigad district on November 4 in connection with the suicide of architect-interior designer Anvay Naik and his mother in 2018 over alleged non-payment of dues by companies of the accused.
Meanwhile, the hearing on Goswami's bail plea is also scheduled to be heard in the trial court during the day.
The high court, while rejecting the interim bail pleas of Goswami and the two other accused Feroze Shaikh and Nitish Sarda, had said, "no case has been made out for us (court) to exercise our extraordinary jurisdiction".
"The petitioners have the efficacious remedy of seeking bail before the sessions court concerned. We have already noted earlier that if such bail plea is filed, then the sessions court shall decide the same in four days," it said on Monday.
Goswami, Shaikh and Sarda had last week filed petitions in the high court challenging their "illegal arrest" in the case and seeking interim bail.
Apart from seeking the interim bail, the journalist and other accused had also sought that a direction from the High Court for staying the investigation into the case and quash the FIR against them.
The High Court will hear their pleas seeking to quash the FIR on December 10.
Goswami was arrested on November 4 from his Lower Parel residence in Mumbai.
The three accused were later produced before a magistrate who refused to send them in police custody and remanded them in judicial custody till November 18.
Goswami was initially kept at a local school which is designated as a Covid-19 quarantine centre for the Alibaug prison.
He was on Sunday shifted to the Taloja jail in Raigad district after allegedly being found using a mobile phone while in judicial custody.
On Sunday, Pradeep Bhandari, a consulting editor with Republic news channel, wrote to Chief Justice of India (CJI) S A Bobde urging him to take cognizance of shifting of Goswami to Taloja Jail to keep him allegedly with "hardened" and "underworld" criminals and provide "some sort of safety" to him.
He said Goswami has said that "his life is in danger and he has been beaten up in the morning" and urged the CJI to take cognizance of this matter and provide some sort of safety to him.
