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Arnab Goswami spends another night in custody. Where the case stands now
While the Bombay high court will hear Goswami’s interim relief plea today, local police has filed a revision application seeking Goswami’s police custody which will be heard by a sessions court tomorrow.
After the Bombay high court posted the hearing of Republic Television editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami’s interim bail plea to Friday, the 47-year-old journalist spent another night at Alibag Nagar Parishad School, designated as a Covid-19 centre of the prison. Before shifting him to the main jail, in case his bail plea is not granted, he will be tested for Covid-19. Goswami was arrested on Wednesday from his Lower Parel house in Mumbai and was then taken to Alibag in connection with a 2018 case of abetment to suicide. Designer Anvay Naik and his mother Kumud Naik died of suicide and named Goswami as one of the three people who didn’t pay dues amounting to Rs 5.4 crore.
Here’s where the case stands
1. The Bombay high court heard the case on Thursday and posted it for today as they wanted Anvay Naik’s wife Akshata Naik as a respondent. Maharashtra government and Akshata Naik are the respondents in the case.
2. On Thursday, the Alibag police moved a revision application to sessions court seeking quashing of the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s earlier order (in which Goswami was remanded to judicial custody) and the police custody of Goswami. But there are chances that Goswami might get interim relief today.
3. At present, there is no bail plea before the Alibag court as Goswami’s counsel Abad Ponda said the bail plea has been withdrawn. As the case now lies with the sessions court, the plea has been withdrawn.
4. Goswami is in judicial custody till November 18.
5. The police filed the revision application after Chief Judicial Magistrate Sunaina Pingle on Wednesday night denied police custody and termed the arrest ‘prima facie illegal’. Police, in its revision application, said the magistrates court had “erred in not considering the submissions and grounds submitted by the prosecution” while seeking custody of Goswami and the two other arrested accused.
The Alibag magistrate court denied police custody and raised two issues.
* Did Kumodini (Anvay’s mother) die by suicide? There is no clear answer to this by the prosecution. The police have been unable to establish a link between the deaths of Kumodini Naik and Anvay Naik and the three arrested accused, the court said.
*The police have not been able to specifically point out the so-called lacunae in the probe done by the previous police team in 2018, the court observed.
