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Elgar Parishad case: Accused Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, arrested in 2018, walk out of jail
The Bombay high court granted bail to Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale on January 8.
Activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale, among the accused in the Elgar Parishad case, were released from jail on Friday, over two weeks after the Bombay high court, on January 8, granted bail to them.
Both Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale were arrested in 2018, months after alleged inflammatory speeches at an Elgar Parishad event in Maharashtra's Pune, on December 31, 2017, triggered violence at Koregaon-Bhima of the Pune district the next day.
The Pune Police had claimed the event was backed by the Maoists. Later, the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). However, of the 16 persons arrested in the case, many are now out on bail.
What Bombay HC said while giving bail to Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale
A Bombay high court division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Kamal Khata took note of the ‘long incarceration’ suffered by Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale, and the likelihood of the trial not completing ‘any time soon,’ and granted bail.
In its order, the bench stated that at the current stage, it was not dealing with the merits of the case. The trial, it said, will not conclude in the near future because there were more than 300 witnesses in the case.
Lawyers for Wilson and Dhawale had argued that the two accused were ‘languishing’ in jail since 2018, and the special court, too, was still to frame the ‘charges’ against them.
Granting relief, the court directed them to submit a surety of ₹one lakh each and appear before the special NIA court for the trial hearing.
While Rona Wilson has been described as ‘one of the top brass’ of ‘urban Maoists,’ Sudhir Dhawale is accused of being an active member of the proscribed Communist Party of India (Maoist).
(With PTI inputs)
