Nalasopara arms haul: HC grants bail to Sanatan Sanstha member Vaibhav Raut

The Bombay high court has granted bail to Vaibhav Subhash Raut, a member of the Sanatan Sanstha, who was arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb the Sunburn festival in Pune. The court cited Raut's long incarceration and the slow progress of the trial as reasons for granting bail.

The Bombay high court has granted bail to Sanatan Sanstha member Vaibhav Subhash Raut, who was arrested in August 2018 for allegedly plotting to bomb the Sunburn festival in Pune. The purported plan failed after the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) raided four places in Nalasopara and seized a large cache of crude bombs and arms and ammunition.

Mumbai, India - August 10, 2018 : Vaibhav Raut, a real estate agent from Nalasopara, and “seeker” of the Hindu right-wing group Sanatan Sansta, was the first to be arrested on Friday morning. ATS officials searched his house where they seized eight crude bombs and also seized 12 more bombs, two gelatine sticks, among other things, from his shop. HT Photo (Hindustan Times)

A division bench of justice Revati Mohite Dere and justice Gauri Godse granted relief to Raut on grounds that he had been incarcerated for more than five years and the trial was not likely to conclude in the near future.

The bench said though the trial had started only four of the 417 witnesses sought to be examined by the prosecution had made a deposition so far. The bench also took into consideration the fact that three of Raut’s co-accused had been granted bail on grounds of long incarceration.

The court ordered Raut to be released on furnishing a personal bond in the sum of ₹50,000 and one solvent surety in the same amount. The 44-year-old Nalasopara resident has been asked not to leave Mumbai and Vasai-Virar without prior permission of the trial court.

The order was passed on September 20, but it was made available on Friday.

Acting on a tip-off, ATS raided several places in Nalasopara in August 2018 and seized crude bombs, 16 country-made pistols, parts of pistols, magazines, nine partially assembled pistols, live cartridges, and material required to assemble bombs such as gelatin sticks, detonators, safety fuse wires etc. Raut, nephew of a local Shiv Sena leader, was arrested after an ATS team found eight crude bombs at his residence and 12 in a godown purportedly used by him.

Raut approached the high court after the trial court rejected his bail plea on December 14, 2022. Advocate Sana Raees Khan, on behalf of Raut, sought bail for him pointing to his long incarceration and the fact that three of his co-accused - Avinash Pawar aka Ajit Dada, Liladhar aka Vijay Lodhi and Pratap Hajra - had been granted bail.

Khan also pointed out that neither the house nor the godown from where the crude bombs were purportedly seized was owned by Raut. She said the house was owned by his father and the godown was in the name of Om Sai Developers. Even otherwise, the seizure was not based on his revelation, and it was made before Raut’s arrest and as such it could not be attributed to him, the advocate added.

Additional public prosecutor Kumar Saste, however, opposed the bail plea saying the accused were active members of Sanatan Sanstha which intended to convert India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and the group wished to target events like the Sunburn festival in Pune which they perceived to be against the tenets of Hinduism. Saste also pointed out that ATS had seized Raut’s diary, and its content showed that the planning was done by the 44-year-old and others to prepare crude bombs.

The HC, however, said there was no corroboration for the content of the diary. The bench also took into consideration that Liladhar Lodhi, from whose house ATS had allegedly seized three crude bombs, had already been granted bail by another bench, and the other bench had taken note of the fact that Sanatan Sanstha was not banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act either as a terrorist organisation or a frontal organisation for a body involved in terrorist activities.