Mumbai: Falsely arrested because she had exposed illegal arrests and tortures.
NIA deliberately and consciously didn’t maintain the integrity of the electronic evidence allegedly seized from her.
Letters and communication, allegedly containing incriminating material against the accused in the case, were neither in her possession nor addressed to her, or by her.
Content allegedly found from hard disks of the co-accused and the mere mention of a lawful and registered organisation cannot be sufficient ground to brand it as a front of CPI (Maoist).
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday asked Shoma Sen, an accused in the Elgar Parishad case, to first approach the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court with bail plea before coming to the HC.
A division bench of Justices Ajey Gadkari and PD Naik disposed of Ms Sen’s plea, saying that the NIA court has not had a chance to consider the bail application after the charge sheet was filed.
Ms Sen, an English literature professor and Dalit and women’s rights activist, was arrested on June 6, 2018. In December 2018, she had applied for bail before the Pune Sessions Court, prior to filing of charge sheet. She filed another application after the charge sheet was filed. Both the applications were rejected by the court by way of common order of November 2019.
Later, the investigation in the case was transferred to the NIA and the trial was transferred to the special NIA court.
Ms Sen then approached the High Court for bail in 2020, contending that she was falsely arrested because she had exposed illegal arrests and tortures. She further contended that there was deliberate and conscious omission on part of the investigating agency to maintain the integrity of the electronic evidence allegedly seized from her.
Her plea also contended that the letters and communication, allegedly containing incriminating material against the accused in the case, were neither in her possession nor addressed to her, or by her. “That merely because the name ‘Shoma Sen’ is mentioned in any of these so called electronic letters cannot be a reasonable ground to deny bail,” read the plea.
Ms Sen added that the contents of the letters and communication allegedly found from hard disks of the co-accused and the mere mention of the name of a lawful and registered organisation such as ‘Anuradha Gandhy Memorial Committee’ cannot be sufficient ground to brand such an organisation as a front of the proscribed CPI (Maoist).
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