Elgar Parishad case: Gautam Navlakha gets bail but order stayed for 3 weeks

Activist Gautam Navlakha on Tuesday (December 19) became the seventh accused to be granted bail in the Elgar Parishad case, with the Bombay High Court granting him bail on a surety of Rs 1 lakh.

However, the court stayed the order for three weeks after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sought such a stay so that it could file an appeal in the Supreme Court.

Earlier, the division Bench headed by Justice A S Gadkari said Navlakha’s plea seeking bail was “allowed”.

Navlakha, who was arrested in August 2018, was in November last year permitted by the Supreme Court to be placed under house arrest. He lives in Navi Mumbai at present.

Case history

In April this year, a special court had refused to grant him bail, noting that there was prima facie evidence to show that the activist was an active member of the banned outfit CPI (Maoist). In his appeal filed in the high court, Navlakha said the special court had erred while refusing him bail.

This was 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, stated that the reasoning in the special court’s order was cryptic and did not contain an analysis of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution. The high court had ruled that the bail application required 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.

Re-hearing

Accordingly, Navlakha had moved the special court for a re-hearing of 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 relates to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the police claim triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.

As many as 16 activists were arrested in the case, of whom six are currently out on bail.

Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferrira, and Mahesh Raut are out on regular bail, while poet Varavara Rao is currently out on bail on health grounds.

(With agency inputs)