The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to researcher Rona Wilson and activist Sudhir Dhawale, in the Elgar Parishad case, noting that the two have already spent more than six years in jail without trial and that charges against them have not been framed yet.
A division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and Kamal Khata said the two had spent more than six years in jail as under-trial prisoners.
"They are in jail since 2018. Even the charges in the case are yet to be framed. The prosecution has cited over 300 witnesses, and thus there is no possibility of the trial to conclude in the near future," the court said.
A trial starts after the charges are framed.
The NIA, the prosecution agency, did not seek a stay to the HC order.
Defence lawyers Mihir Desai and Sudeep Pasbola had argued that the two accused were incarcerated since their arrest in the case.
While granting relief, the high court said it was not dealing with the merits of the case at this stage.
Wilson and Dhawale were directed to submit a surety of Rs 1 lakh each, and appear before the special NIA court for the trial hearing.
They shall surrender their passports and not leave the city until the trial is over, the HC said.
Rona Wilson was arrested in June 2018 from his home in Delhi and was described by the probe agencies as one of the top brass of urban Maoists.
In February 2021, a report by the US-based Arsenal Consulting stated that Rona Wilson's computer was repeatedly hacked for over two years. the report further stated that the 'letters’ cited by the authorities to establish his 'extremist' links, were planted as folders in his computer through a malware. Wilson’s lawyers submitted a copy of the report to the Bombay High Court and sought to quash the case against him.
Sudhir Dhawale, who was arrested on 6 June 2018, was accused of being an active member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Apart from Dhawale and Wilson, 14 other activists were arrested in the case.
Eight of them -- Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Anand Teltumbde, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Shoma Sen, Gautam Navlakha and Mahesh Raut -- have been granted bail till now.
Mahesh Raut remained in jail as the appeal filed by the NIA against his bail is pending before the Supreme Court.
But on Tuesday the special NIA court granted him interim bail for 18 days to enable him to appear for an LLB exam.
Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist who is one of the accused in the case, died while in prison on July 5, 2021, due to cardiac arrest following his contraction of COVID-19.
Swamy, who also suffered from Parkinson's Disease, was repeatedly denied bail by the court, prompting many to call his death an "institutional murder."
In a statement released on February 2022, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Swamy's detention arbitrary and his death "utterly preventable."
The case pertains to provocative speeches allegedly delivered at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017. According to the case, the speeches delivered by the activists allegedly triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima in Pune district the next day.
The Pune police had claimed the conclave was backed by the Maoists. The NIA later took over the probe.
(With inputs from PTI)