Naresh Gaur, who was granted bail last month by the trial court in the Antilia bomb scare - Mansukh Hiran murder case, has approached the Bombay High Court challenging the order of the special court staying his bail for 25 days.
The 31-year-old, who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in March this year, is the first among 10 accused in the case to secure bail.
A special NIA court, on November 20, granted him bail after observing that prima facie (on the face of it), he did not seem to be aware of the conspiracy. However, the special court stayed its own order for 25 days after the prosecution requested for the same saying it wished to challenge the grant of bail before an appellate court.
Aggrieved, Gaur filed a petition before the HC through his advocate Aniket Nikam challenging the stay the special court granted on his bail order.
Terming the stay order as “bad in law” and “against the principle of natural justice”, Gaur’s has sought quashing its quashing.
Besides, his plea contends that the special court, after considering the chargesheet in the case, had granted him bail observing that “the petitioner (Gaur) had no active knowledge of the conspiracy”. In view of this, the special court should not have stayed his bail and continued his incarceration.
Gaur also argued in his plea that he had merely bought a sim card that was subsequently used by dismissed Mumbai police officer Sachin Vaze in the said cases. He had no idea of the larger conspiracy and he had never been directly contacted by Waze, Gaur said in his plea.
While granting bail to Gaur, special judge under the NIA Act AT Wankhede had observed: “Apparently, the applicant (Gaur) provided five SIM cards to accused Vinayak Shinde who then gave it to Sachin Vaze. He had done the said act as per the directions of his owner...prime facie it could not be gathered that he was having an active knowledge of the conspiracy.”
The plea will be heard before bench of justice SK Shinde on December 7.
