MUMBAI: Advocate Surendra Gadling, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, on Tuesday urged the Bombay High Court to grant him temporary bail to take part in certain rituals on the first death anniversary of his mother next month.
Gadling had moved the high court last year seeking bail.
In his plea, filed through senior lawyer Indira Jaising and advocate R Sathyanarayan, Gadling had challenged a special court's order from 2020 that rejected his plea for temporary bail to attend the last rites of his mother.
Gadling was arrested by the Pune police in June 2018 (the case was later taken over by the NIA), and has remained lodged in the Taloja central prison in Navi Mumbai since then awaiting trial.
On August 15, 2020, his mother died in Nagpur.
Gadling then filed the temporary bail plea before the special NIA court in Mumbai (where the case was shifted for trial), seeking release from jail for three weeks to perform his mother's last rites, but his application was rejected.
He had then moved the HC, wherer his plea was adjourned several times.
However, on Tuesday, advocate Jaising told a bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamadar that Gadling be granted temporary bail to attend some rituals on his mother's first death anniversary.
"The funeral rites of the mother have not been conducted till now and they have been planned on the first death anniversary, on August 15, 2021," Jaising told the HC, urging it to grant temporary bail to Gadling.
The HC posted the plea for further hearing on July 22.