New Delhi: The Bombay high court on Tuesday (December 19) granted bail to rights activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the Elgar Parishad case.A division bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and S.G. Dige imposed the same bail conditions on Navlakha as the co-accused Anand Teltumbde and Mahesh Raut, Bar and Bench reported. The court also agreed to a three-week stay on its decision in which the National Investigation Agency can approach the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court had on November 10 last year allowed Navlakha to be placed under house arrest on account of his health.Navlakha had been arrested in August 2018. The case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the ‘Elgar Parishad’ conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which Pune police claimed triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.The Pune police had claimed the conclave was backed by Maoists.The case was later handed over to the NIA.Navlakha is one of 16 rights activists, scholars and lawyers arrested in the Elgar Parishad case.The case has been widely criticised in India and abroad as an attempt by the Union government to curb dissenting voices, instead of holding the real culprits of the 2018 violence against Dalits in Bhima Koregaon responsible. Five of the accused – lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, poet Varavara Rao, academic Anand Teltumbe, lawyer Arun Ferreira and activist Vernon Gonsalves – are currently out on bail. Father Stan Swamy, a tribal rights activist and Jesuit priest, passed away while in custody.Activist Mahesh Raut was granted bail in September, but remains in jail as the stay on that decision was extended.The prosecution has relied on 336 witnesses in the case. The trial, however, is yet to commence.Recently, Navlakha was also named as an accused in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case filed in relation to the online portal NewsClick. Two people – editor Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakraborty – have been arrested in that case. Media bodies from across the country have criticised the police action in the case as an attack on media freedom.The Print reported that the Delhi Police on Tuesday asked for an extension of three months to complete their investigation in the NewsClick case, and said that they would be questioning Navlakha on Wednesday.
