New Delhi, Nov.18: The Bombay high court on Friday (November 18) granted bail to scholar Anand Teltumbde, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case. Seventy-three-year-old Teltumbde has been in Mumbai’s Taloja Central Prison since his arrest on April 14, 2020.
After granting bail, the high court stayed its order for one week at the request of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), to allow the NIA to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court.
A bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and Milind Jadhav granted Teltumbde bail after hearing his appeal challenging the rejection of bail by a special NIA court.
The court observed that offences under section 13 (Punishment for unlawful activities), section 16 (punishment for terrorist act) and section 18 (punishment for conspiracy) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act were not made out, LiveLaw reported, and only offences under section 38 and 39 (membership and support to a terrorist organisation) were made out.
Bail has been granted on the execution of a PR bond worth Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh sureties.
Teltumbde is one of 16 rights activists, scholars and lawyers arrested in the Elgar Parishad case. The case has been widely criticised in India and abroad as an attempt by the Union government to curb dissenting voices, instead of holding the real culprits of the 2018 violence against Dalits in Bhima Koregaon responsible. Two of the accused – lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj and poet Varavara Rao – are currently out on bail. Father Stan Swamy, a tribal rights activist and Jesuit priest, passed away while in custody.
