Elgar Parishad case: HC grants bail to Gautam Navlakha; stays order for three weeks

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) urged the court to stay operation of the order for a period of six weeks so that it could file an appeal in the Supreme Court. The bench stayed the order for three weeks.

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to human rights activist and journalist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the 2008 Elgar Parishad case.

Navlakha (70) was arrested on 14 April 2020 by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

A division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice AS Gadkari and Justice SG Dige granted bail to Navlakha.

“…allowed…,” the bench said granting bail to Navlakha, who faces charges of having links with Maoists.

The high court granted bail on a surety of Rs 1 lakh.

However, the bench stayed the bail order for three weeks following a request by the NIA, which intends to appeal against the same before the Supreme Court.

The detailed order with the reasoning is awaited.

In November 2023, the Supreme Court had asked him to be placed under house arrest, and since then he has been residing in Navi Mumbai.

As many as 16 persons have been arrested in the case.

Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferrira and Mahesh Raut are out on regular bail, while poet Varavara Rao is currently out on bail on health grounds. Navlakha is the seventh accused to be granted bail in this case.

Father Stan Swamy died in jail a couple of years ago while he was an undertrial.

The accused were arrested in the backdrop of the 31 December, 2017 meeting at the historic Elgar Parishad at Shaniwarwada in the heart of the Pune city and the subsequent 1 January, 2018 caste riots in Koregaon Bhima in the Shirur tehsil of Pune district.