Elgar Parishad case: NIA court rejects Gautam Navlakha’s bail plea

The Bombay high court had last month directed the special court to hear Navlakha’s bail plea again after noticing that the previous order, rejecting his bail plea, did not contain proper reasoning and the analysis for the rejection of the plea.

Mumbai: The special NIA court on Thursday rejected the bail plea of civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha – an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon violence case.

Navlakha was arrested on August 28, 2018, for his alleged involvement in the case. He was released after an order from the Delhi high court on October 1, 2018. He was again arrested on April 14, 2020, after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by all courts, including the Supreme Court. (HT PHOTO)

The Bombay high court had last month directed the special court to hear Navlakha’s bail plea again after noticing that the previous order, rejecting his bail plea, did not contain proper reasoning and the analysis for the rejection of the plea.

In his bail plea, Navlakha had claimed that communicating with a fugitive for academic, journalistic or other purposes which are not illegal is not an offence and the charges of UAPA are also not applicable to him.

Navlakha also claimed that he was critical of Maoist ideology. “Being a peace activist, his beliefs are exactly opposite to that of the Maoists whose core beliefs are intrinsically based on violence. It is submitted that the applicant has criticised the Maoists and is implacably opposed to violence as his published writings (which pre-date his arrest) show,” he claimed in his plea.

The prosecution has claimed that “documents available with the prosecution establish the close association of the accused/applicant with all the other functionaries and members of CPI(M), the people having connections with CIA, the people who are spreading separatist movement in Kashmir and several NGOs.”

The agency had claimed that the documents recovered from him are sufficient to hold that the accused/applicant is a member of the banned terrorist organisation.

Navlakha was arrested on August 28, 2018, for his alleged involvement in the case. He was released after an order from the Delhi high court on October 1, 2018. He was again arrested on April 14, 2020, after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by all courts, including the Supreme Court.