Saturday, 11 January 2025
Saturday, 11 January 2025
A Bengaluru city court recently granted bail to Sharad Bhausaheb Kalaskar, an accused in journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder, the legal affairs website Live Law reported on Friday. A total of 17 of the 18 accused in the case are out on bail. One remains absconding.
“On this day all the accused facing trial in the case except the Petitioner are on bail. As such the Petitioner is entitled for bail even on the ground of parity,” said principal city civil & sessions judge, Muralidhara Pai B as he granted bail to Kalaskar on grounds of parity, according to Live Law.
Lankesh was the editor and publisher of a Bangalore weekly, the Gauri Lankesh Patrike, and an outspoken Left-wing journalist critical of the Narendra Modi government.
On September 5, 2017, a man on a motorcycle approached her as she was returning to her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Bengaluru. He shot her twice, in the chest and in the back. Two more shots that he fired missed her.
The Supreme Court of India, in August last year, had held that “bail is the rule, jail is the exception” even in special statutes like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act aka UAPA.
Against that backdrop, here’s a look at some people whom the courts across the country have granted bail in the past year, and a few others whose bail plea the courts have rejected repeatedly, or given only meagre interim relief.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted interim bail – for a two-month period – to self-styled godman Asaram Bapu. Asaram was in jail for a 2013 rape case registered in Gujarat and for another case of raping a minor in Rajasthan.
“He is on his death bed. Whatever be the nature of the crime, when it comes to the health of the convict, the burden rests on the state and the court. Let him get this facility, nobody will blame you or us,” said the Supreme Court.
In October 2024, Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was released on parole. This was reportedly his 15th parole in four years. His release came just ahead of the Haryana Assembly polls.
On Thursday, the police argued before the Delhi high court that the speeches by Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and others created a sense of fear after a common reference to CAA-NRC, Babri Masjid, triple talaq and Kashmir.
Opposing their bail pleas before Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Shalinder Kaur, the police made their submissions in the UAPA case related to the communal violence which took place in northeast Delhi in February 2020.
“Speeches by..Sharjeel Imam…and Umar Khalid show a common pattern.. All are on identical lines. They create a sense of fear in the people hearing them..(by talking about) CAA-NRC, Babri, triple talaq and Kashmir,” said special public prosecutor Amit Prasad.
The judge left the bail plea undecided, and the court is scheduled to hear the matter on January 21.
Delhi police’s special cell arrested the scholar and former JNU student Khalid under the UAPA on September 14, 2020. He got interim bail on December 18, 2024, after spending over four years in jail. Khalid went back to jail last Friday.
He had been granted a similar interim relief for his sister’s wedding in December 2022.
Khalid had moved the trial court seeking interim bail even as his regular bail plea is pending before Delhi high court.
Imam, a former student of JNU and IIT Bombay, has been languishing in jail from January 28, 2020 for his involvement in Shaheen Bagh movement. According to reports, Imam’s bail plea has been listed 60 times.
He continues to be in Tihar, as does Khalid.
On December 31, 2017 a group organised the Elgar Parishad, a programme in Pune to observe the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. The next day, there violence broke out in Pune. Police said that speeches by activists belonging to proscribed groups led to the violence.
Cops arrested many of the Elgar Parishad accused and put them in jail.
Professor-activist Shoma Sen, Varavara Rao, trade unionist Sudha Bhardwaj are some of the accused who are still in jail after their bail pleas were rejected multiple times.
Another accused, Father Stan Swamy, passed away in prison after contracting Covid-19. He was denied medical bail despite having advanced Parkinson’s disease and was not even allowed a sipper cup to drink water.
Then there was academic G.N. Saibaba, who was arrested in May 2014. He was wheelchair-bound and handicapped. He was acquitted twice by the Bombay High Court. The first acquittal was suspended by the Supreme Court, which met on a Saturday to do so, but another bench of the high court acquitted him afresh.
This time, the Supreme Court declined to stay the acquittal when the Maharashtra government moved the top court against the high court order
The state released him from jail in June 2024. He died just three months later.
