Swarna Shukla-
Published on: December 07, 2021 at 15: 10 IST
The Supreme Court rejected the National Investigation Agency’s Plea challenging the dereliction Bail granted to Lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj by the Bombay High Court in the Bhima Koregaon case.
The Bench of Justice UU Lalit, Justice Ravindra Bhat and Justice Bela Trivedi was hearing Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s Solicitation challenging Bharadwaj’s Bail.
Bharadwaj, who has been in jail since 2018, was granted dereliction Bail by a two-Judge Bench of the Bombay High Court on December 1. The Court had asked her to approach the special National Investigation Agency Court by December 8 to finalise modalities about her release and Bail conditions.
Still, on December 3, the National Investigation Agency challenged the Order in the Supreme Court.
The Bench said, “When Special Court manned by special judges was in actuality also why did you make this operation for an extension before a authoritative Court?”
Among the nine aspirants, only Bharadwaj got bail as her solicitation met the criteria needed for dereliction bail. She filed the operation before the form of the chargesheet and when her 90- day detention period was over.
The Bhima Koregaon case pertains to estate violence in a village near Pune in 2018. One person was killed and several others injured in the violence.
A supplementary chargesheet was filed in February 2019, against Bharadwaj, minstrel Varavara Rao, activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves and banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) leader Ganapathy. The indicted were charged with “waging war against the nation” and spreading the testament of the CPI (Maoist), besides creating estate conflicts and abomination in the society.
The Centre transferred the case to the National Investigation Agency in January 2020 after the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharashtra, led by Devendra Fadnavis, was defeated.