Elgar Parishad case: HC asks Shoma Sen to approach NIA court for bail

Sen had filed for bail in HC on the grounds that she was arrested based on the uncorroborated electronic evidence seized from co-accused Rona Wilson’s computer.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday disposed of the bail plea of Shoma Sen – one of the accused in the Elgar Parishad case – and directed her to approach the special NIA court before moving HC with a bail application based on the supplementary chargesheet filed by the federal agency.

The division bench of justice AS Gadkari and justice PD Naik which was hearing the bail application said the plea should be heard by the special NIA court first so that it had an opportunity to decide on granting bail to Sen based on the supplementary chargesheet. (HT File Photo)

Sen had filed for bail in HC on the grounds that she was arrested based on the uncorroborated electronic evidence seized from co-accused Rona Wilson’s computer.

The division bench of justice AS Gadkari and justice PD Naik which was hearing the bail application said the plea should be heard by the special NIA court first so that it had an opportunity to decide on granting bail to Sen based on the supplementary chargesheet.

Sen, who was arrested in 2018 along with other accused, had applied for bail in the Pune sessions court before and after the chargesheet was filed. However, after both applications had been rejected by a common order in November 2019, she approached the HC. The NIA had then filed a supplementary chargesheet based on the purported incriminatory evidence recovered from Wilson’s computer.

In her application before the HC, Sen had submitted that the evidence recovered from the computer in the form of emails and documents had not originated from her nor the emails were addressed to her but merely because her name was mentioned in those documents she had been arrested in the case.

Sen – a former professor at Nagpur University and rights activist – had alleged that after NIA took over the investigation, it had failed to maintain the integrity of the electronic device seized from Wilson. She stated that her arrest was because she was highlighting illegal arrests and custodial torture meted out by the police on the persons it arrested for different crimes.

The application further referred to the contention of the investigation agency that the ‘Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committee’ was a frontal organisation of the banned CPI (Maoist) group and said that because the name of the committee was found mentioned in the documents recovered from Wilson’s computer such an assumption was arbitrary.

After hearing the contentions by advocates for Sen, the bench said the issues raised by her should be first considered by the special court to decide whether she could be released on bail and disposed of the appeal.