Elgar Parishad case: Gautam Navlakha moves HC for bail again

Mumbai: Gautam Navlakha, one of the accused in the Elgar Parishad case has approached the Bombay high court for a second time and appealed against the rejection of his bail application by a special NIA court earlier this month. Last year, he had filed an appeal in HC when the special court rejected his bail application in September 2022.

After hearing the first appeal in March, the HC had said that as the September order of the special court was cryptic, it needed to conduct a fresh hearing and give a reasoned order as it had not justified the grounds for rejection. The special court reheard the matter at length and rejected the bail application again with a reasoned order running into 39 pages.

Navlakha then filed an appeal against the rejection again on April 18. The appeal was first mentioned before the division bench of Justice Revati-Mohite Dere on April 20, but after she recused from hearing it, the appeal was listed before the bench of Justice Girish Kulkarni and Justice Rajesh Laddha which was to hear the appeal on Wednesday but due to paucity of time the hearing was not held.

In his fresh appeal filed before the HC through advocates Yug Mohit Chaudhry and Shifa Khan, Navlakha has claimed that the special judge has erroneously observed that he has links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) group and hence sought quashing of the special court order and releasing him on bail.

Navlakha, who is one of the sixteen persons accused in the Elgar Parishad case was arrested on April 14, 2020 and was in Taloja jail with the other accused till November last year when the Supreme Court directed that he be placed under house arrest. On November 19, he was put under house arrest at Navi Mumbai where he has remained since then.

In March, while directing the special court to rehear the bail application, the division bench of Justice AS Gadkari had set aside the September 5, 2022, order and asked the special judge to restore the bail application and decide it within four weeks.

On April 6, special NIA Judge Rajesh Katariya after hearing the application afresh had held that there was prima facie evidence of a nexus between him and Syed Gulam Nabi Fai, who was convicted by a US court in 2012 for his links with ISI of Pakistan. The special court also noted that there were reasonable grounds to believe the NIA’s accusations which included that Navlakha was a member of the banned CPI (Maoist) group.