The Bombay High Court (HC) granted default bail to activist Sudha Bharadwaj in Elgar Parishad case.
According to reports, she will have to go before the special NIA court on December 8, which will impose bail conditions. Following which she can be released.
This is the first time that a person accused in the high-profile case has been granted default bail, which can be given if a person is jailed for more than 90 days without a chargesheet.
However, the court has rejected the bail applications of eight co-accused and said that they didn’t qualify for automatic bail.
All the accused are under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for participating in alleged Maoist conspiracy to trigger violence on January 1, 2018 in Bhima Koregaon village in Maharashtra’s Pune district.
Bharadwaj, arguably the most prominent of the arrested activists, applied for default bail arguing that sessions judge K D Vadane did not have jurisdiction to do so as only a special NIA court could hear UAPA cases.
Vadane granted the activist a 90-day extension police custody on November 26, 2018 to file the chargesheet.
Yug Chaudhry, her advocate, cited responses from the high court’s registry under the Right to Information (RTI) Act to say that Vadane was not competent to hear matters under UAPA. He added Vadane was not even authorised as a special judge to take cognisance of the Pune Police’s supplementary charge sheet filed on February 21, 2019.
The other accused include Varavara Rao Raut, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut and Surendra Gadling.
Though poet Varavara Rao, is out on medical bail and a second accused, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, died in July.
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