SC to take up activist Gautam Navlakha’s bail plea on March 3

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 1

The Supreme Court will on Wednesday hear the bail plea of activist Gautam Navlakha in the alleged Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case.

Navlakha– who is currently lodged in Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai—had moved the top court on February 19 challenging the Bombay High Court’s February 8 order dismissing his bail plea.

The 67-year-old activist had surrendered before the National Investigation Agency on April 14 last year following the Supreme Court’s direction. He was initially lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi and was taken to Mumbai by train on May 26, 2020 by the NIA which is investigating the case.

His plea would come up for hearing before a three-judge Bench led by Justice UU Lalit on March 3.

Police alleged that some activists made inflammatory speeches and provocative statements at the Elgar Parishad meet in Pune on December 31, 2017, which triggered violence at Koregaon Bhima in the district the next day. Police alleged that the event was backed by some Maoist groups.

Navlakha had approached the high court last year, challenging the special NIA court’s July 12, 2020, order that rejected his plea for statutory bail.

But the high court said “it sees no reason to interfere with a special court’s order which earlier rejected his bail plea”.

The Pune police had arrested Navlakha in August 2018, but had not taken him into custody. He remained under house arrest and the Delhi High Court quashed his arrest and remand order in October 2018.

The FIR against him was re-registered in January 2020, and Navlakha surrendered before the NIA on April 14 last year. He spent 11 days in the NIAs custody till April 25, and since then he in judicial custody in the Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai.