More than eight years after his arrest, the Bombay High Court on Friday acquitted former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba in an alleged Maoist links case for want of valid sanction for prosecution under the stringent anti-terror law UAPA.
Following the HC order, the prosecution moved the Supreme Court against the acquittal. The SC, however, rejected its request for an immediate stay on the order.
Saibaba was convicted by the Gadchiroli sessions court in 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had challenged this judgment before the HC and spent five years in prison before the verdict was overturned.
The charges against Mr Saibaba include serious ones under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). There are similar allegations of links to the banned terrorist organisation Communist Party of India (Maoist) and intentions to overthrow the state.
With GN Saibaba getting acquitted by the Bombay High Court’s Nagpur bench on Friday, here's a look at the other Maoist-link case which is the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case.
In the Bhima-Koregaon case, the investigation was taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2020, the initial probe being done by the Pune police. Most of the accused have spent years in custody, being arrested in August 2018. As many as 15 activists, lawyers and professors are accused in the case. The number of accused was 16 earlier, but with a Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Stan Swamy passing away in July last year, there are 15 persons left to face trial.
The trial has not yet begun, the case being at the stage where the special NIA court is yet to decide if they can stand trial. However, 13 of the 15 accused are in prison, and only lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj and Telugu poet Varavara Rao were able to secure bail.
Bail applications before the special court have been consistently rejected, including temporary bail applications filed during the Covid-19 pandemic. At present, the special court is hearing discharge applications of some of the accused who had sought a clean chit from the offences, including that professor and activist Anand Teltumbde and cultural activist Jyoti Jagtap.
Seven of the accused had approached the Bombay High Court seeking bail. They had claimed parity on the ground that Bhardwaj got bail. However, the HC has refused to grant bail. The HC had also rejected a review petition by them seeking bail.
At present, the HC is in the process of hearing the bail plea by Arun Ferreira. He too has sought default bail on parity with co-accused Sudha Bharadwaj in the case.
