News Desk, AnyTV, Mumbai
Published by: Shiv Sharan Shukla
Updated Thu, 24 Feb 2022 08:55 PM IST
Summary
The National Investigation Agency on Thursday demanded that the Bombay High Court dismiss a petition filed by arrested poet Varavara Rao and two other activists in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case. The High Court had already refused to grant him default bail.
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Opposing the plea, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday demanded that the Bombay High Court dismiss a petition filed by arrested poet Varavara Rao and two other activists in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case. The High Court had already refused to grant him default bail.
Kavi Varavara Rao is currently out on medical bail, while the other two activists are in jail. The NIA said that through the petition, the accused are seeking modification of the High Court’s order after verification of records and hearing of the case.
The NIA said that the applicants should have approached the appellate court to appeal instead of this court. The agency, in its affidavit, said that once the matter is decided and dismissed by this court, the applicants cannot come with the same prayer under the guise of review. This is an abuse of due process of law. This would set a wrong precedent.
Significantly, the three accused have challenged an order dated December 1, 2021 passed by a bench headed by Justice Shinde. Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, co-accused in this case, was granted default bail, but some other accused persons were denied default bail. All the three petitioners are also involved in this. At that time, the High Court, while hearing, had observed that the accused other than Bhardwaj had not filed their petition for default bail before the trial court within the time prescribed by law.
The NIA, in its reply, said that Section 362 of the CrPC prohibits the court to modify or review a judgment passed by the High Court on merits.
However, in their petitions filed through advocates Sudip Pasbola and R Satyanarayana, the accused submitted that the HC order was based on factual error. Because the Court failed to note that the trial court through a general order had dismissed the default bail plea filed by Bhardwaj. Therefore, if the High Court set aside the order of the trial court dated November 6, 2019 granting bail to Bhardwaj, others were also entitled to relief. A division bench headed by Justice SS Shinde posted the matter for further hearing on March 2. date has been set.
The matter pertains to the alleged provocative speeches made at the ‘Elgar Parishad’ conference held in Pune on December 31, 2017. The Pune Police had claimed that violence broke out near the Koregaon-Bhima War Memorial on the outskirts of Maharashtra city the next day.
The Pune Police had claimed that the conclave was backed by Maoists. More than a dozen activists and academicians have been made accused in the case. The case was later transferred to the National Investigation Agency.