The Bombay High Court has granted time to poet Varavara Rao, accused in the Elgar-Parishad case, to surrender before the Taloja prison authorities until November 18.
A division bench of justices Nitin Jamdar and Sarang Kotwal on Tuesday extended the 82-year-old’s interim bail and said that he can surrender next month.
The judges also asked Rao to file a separate plea seeking permission to shift to his hometown, Hyderabad, while out on medical bail.
In February, Rao had been granted interim bail for six months on medical grounds by the HC. He was scheduled to surrender and return to judicial custody on September 5.
However, Rao filed an application last month through his lawyers R Sathyanarayanan and senior counsel Anand Grover, seeking extension of such bail. He also sought permission to stay in his hometown of Hyderabad while out on bail.
The NIA however, opposed Rao's plea for extension of medical bail and shifting to Hyderabad saying that the 82-year-old's medical reports do not indicate that he suffers from any serious medical ailment.
In its affidavit filed before HC last month, the NIA had said that the medical reports filed by Rao did not disclose any major ailment, which necessitated him to take treatment at Hyderabad, neither did it form a ground for further extension of bail.
As part of the stringent conditions imposed on his interim bail by HC, Rao has been staying with his wife at a rented accommodation in the city. At the time that he was granted bail, an ailing Rao had been undergoing treatment for multiple ailments at the private Nanavati hospital in the city, where he had been admitted by the state prison authorities following the HC's intervention.
