New Delhi: The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to former IIT professor and Dalit scholar and activist Anand Teltumbde in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case, LiveLaw reported.
73-year-old Teltumbde, who was booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, has been in Mumbai’s Taloja Central Prison since his arrest on April 14, 2020.
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A division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav granted bail to Teltumbde after hearing his appeal challenging the rejection of bail by a special NIA court.
However, the bench put a stay on the order for a week on the NIA’s request for filing an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.
The High Court has directed Teltumbde to furnish a personal bail bond of Rs 1 lakh and two sureties.
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The judges observed that offences under Sections 13 (unlawful activities), 16 (terrorist act) and 18 (conspiracy) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act were not made out against Teltumbde. Only offences under Sections 38 (membership of terrorist organisation) and 39 (support given to terrorist organisation) of the law could be proved, the bail order stated.
Teltumbde was among the 16 persons arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, which pertains to caste violence in a village near Pune in 2018.
He was arrested in April 2020. He is a noted writer of several books and has worked as a senior professor at the Goa Institute of Management.
The NIA has claimed that Teltumbde was among the convenors of the Elgar Parishad held on December 31, 2017, which allegedly sparked the violence at Bhima Koregaon on the following day.