MUMBAI: The Bombay HC on Thursday granted bail to former Delhi University professor Hany Babu Tharayil (55), an accused in Elgar Parishad Maoist-links case in Pune.The bail came over 5 years after his arrest in 2020, in the 2018 case. It was granted on grounds of prolonged jail with trial completion not in sight. A bench of Justices A S Gadkari and R R Bhonsale said it was a well-settled legal principle that prolonged incarceration without trial amounts to infringement of right to life. “Prolonged incarceration and unlikelihood of trial being completed in reasonable time or near future, necessitates a consequential release of the under trial on bail,” it said. HC rejected NIA’s plea for stay, saying Babu was in “pretrial incarceration for over five years and seven months”. Babu faces charges under UAPA. With this, 12 of 16 accused arrested in the case will be out of prison. One of them, Fr Stan Swamy, died in 2021.Elgar Parishad: Babu among several people held | page 9Babu’s plea to the court said he was a distinguished scholar in the field of linguistics with a doctorate from Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad and at the time of his arrest, he was a professor at Delhi University with no criminal antecedents. Yug Chaudhry, his counsel, said he was seeking bail mainly due to prolonged incarceration, not on merits. He said after the high court passed its Sept 2022 bail rejection order, eight co-accused were released on bail by Supreme Court or high court, and he was seeking parity too.The case arose out of an FIR lodged first by the Vishrambaug police station in Pune in Jan 2018 for alleged inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad event on New Year’s Eve. In Jan 2020, the investigation was handed over to NIA with UAPA being invoked. On Dec 31, 2017, Elgar Parishad was organised at Shaniwarwada in Pune by Kabir Kala Manch, a left-leaning cultural outfit, and other organisations on the eve of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Koregaon Bhima near Pune. On Jan 1, 2018, caste clashes erupted at the Koregaon Bhima war memorial, resulting in the death of one person.In the months following the event, a number of people present at Elgar Parishad were arrested. This included activists Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen and Fr Stan Swamy. It was alleged by police that the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) had a hand in conducting the event. They said it instigated violence at Koregaon Bhima.On Feb 14, 2022, a special trial court rejected Babu’s bail plea. On Sept 19 that year, the high court rejected a plea by Babu for bail on merits and observed that it found no perversity in the special trial court order rejecting his bail plea. The material placed before it by the NIA showed the accused “was part of a larger conspiracy and abetted it”, the high court said then. On May 3, 2024, Babu, who went to Supreme Court, said he would approach the high court as there was a change of circumstance. The Supreme Court thus dismissed his appeal as “not pressed for”.He applied again for bail citing the violation of his fundamental rights with the prolonged pre-trial incarceration and Supreme Court rulings that enable the grant of bail on such grounds.Three of the arrested still remain in custody – Gadling, and poet-singers Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, who were arrested in 2020. Supreme Court on Dec 1, in a plea filed by Gadling, directed the state to “endeavour for efficient functioning of the VC (video-conferencing)” facility to enable his appearance digitally. It also directed the special NIA court to decide on or before Jan 15, 2026, an application filed by the prosecution for calling of record.
