On December 7, a Thane court granted bail to 47 people arrested in the Palghar mob lynching case. The District Judge P P Jadhav ordered that the accused be released on a surety of ₹15,000 each.
Last month, the court had granted bail to four other accused in the case. So far the court has granted bail to 53 accused in the case. However, nearly 200 people have been arrested in connection with the case, including 12 that were under 18 years of age.
Advocates Amrut Adhikari and Atul Patil, appeared for the accused, submitted an application stating that their clients had no role in the incident and stated that the police arrested them on mere suspicion.
In October, Maharashtra’s CID had named 218 in connection with this case. They had accused and arrested 50 of them for mob-lynching of two sadhus and their driver. The CID had also arrested 24 more accused in the case incident. With this, the total number of accused arrested in the case had risen to 376.
On April 16, a mob lynched two sadhus– Chikne Maharaj Kalpavrukshagiri (70) and Sushilgiri Maharaj (35) along with their driver Nilesh Telgade (30) at Gadchinchale in Maharashtra's Palghar district, located about 140 km north of Mumbai. While the two monks were heading for Gujarat to attend a funeral, the mob lynched them on suspicion that they were child-lifters.
The accused have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) including 302 (Punishment for murder), 307, 34, 120B. Apart from the sections of the IPC, the accused have been charged under sections 51(b), 52 and 54 of the Disaster Management Act and several provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act as the incident took place amid the lockdown period.
The then Palghar Superintendent of Police, Gaurav Singh, was shunted on compulsory leave and replaced by Dattatray Shinde. In the full-fledged departmental probe, 15 more policemen were penalised with a freeze on promotions and salaries, increments for specified varying periods for their conduct during the incident.
Earlier, the Palghar police had conducted a probe into the case, but it was later handed over to the state CID. The probing agency has filed three charge sheets in the case.