New Delhi: US national Matthew Aaron VanDyke appeared before a Delhi court on Friday (October 23), a month after it gave him leave to visit his country while on bail. He and his co-accused, who appeared via video conferencing, have been given leave to remain outside India, as per reports. The leave has been granted for four months, until February 24, 2027, as per a report in the Hindustan Times.A video surfaced on social media showing VanDyke, earlier accused of providing arms training in Myanmar, walking alone through the corridors of a government building, the Rouse Avenue Court Complex that granted him and the others bail in September.VanDyke and six Ukrainian nationals were arrested on March 13 and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The National Investigation Agency (NIA) was called into the investigation against them. When it filed charge sheet related to these arrests, the UAPA charges (related to “arms training in Myanmar”) against all seven were dropped and the NIA said they had entered Mizoram without the requisite permit – most of the offences could be discharged on payment of a penalty to the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO).However, the agency had said that its investigation under the UAPA was continuing. That is why VanDyke and the other accused still need to appear before the special court. On Friday, the NIA said roughly the same thing – that it still needed time to investigate the NIA case, the Hindu reports. Earlier, the accused had paid up the requisite fines related to travel without permits. Special judge Prashant Sharma of the Rouse Avenue courts had said during a September 18 hearing that the reasoning in his order also applied to the six Ukrainian nationals. VanDyke’s application to leave India was accepted a few days later.On Friday as well, when VanDyke presented himself before the same court, the NIA counsel reportedly said that he had “no objection on his return” back to the US. The counsel also reportedly said that he could be allowed to appear virtually for future hearings in the case. The other co-accused are Petro Hurba, Taras Slyviak, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Marian Stefankiv, Maksym Honcharuk and Viktor Kaminskyi. They did not appear in person citing health concerns, said the Hindu report. They, too, can stay outside India until February 24, HT reports. Initial allegationsVanDyke and the six others were accused of having illegally entered Myanmar through Mizoram, to participate in an allegedly pre-planned training programme for Ethnic Armed Groups (EAG) in civil strife-torn Myanmar. It was said that they would train the groups that were fighting Myanmar’s military junta.Drone warfare as well as drone operations, assembly and jamming technology were part of the training they were said to be imparting to armed groups including the Chin National Front (CNF) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).These activities, as per the NIA’s initial claim, had gone on for around three months.Diplomatic stormThe arrests in March had caused a flurry of diplomatic activity, starting with Ukraine’s embassy in India calling the charges against the six Ukrainians “orchestrated and politically motivated”.In a press release, the embassy said media reports indicated that the Russian side had provided the information that prompted the allegations, and called this evidence of “a possible orchestrated and politically motivated nature of this case, as evidenced, in particular, by the facts known at this stage.”Ukraine lodged a formal protest with India on March 17, with Ambassador Oleksandr Polishchuk meeting MEA Secretary (West) Sibi George and handing over a note demanding the immediate release of the detained nationals and consular access to them.At the same time, Russian state media RT India published an extract of the FIR that charged VanDyke and the others with “huge consignments of drones” for the use of EAGs in Myanmar. The FIR claimed that “these EAGs are also known to be supporting some proscribed Indian Insurgent Groups by way of supplying weapons and other terrorist hardware and training them thus affecting national security and interest of India”.As The Wire previously reported, VanDyke is the founder of Sons of Liberty International, which aims to provide military training and supplies to forces fighting authoritarian regimes. He has been working in Ukraine since March 2022 and enlisted in the Ukrainian armed forces as a combatant.The group had posted on X that it was aware of the detention of VanDyke. “We are in communication with the US State Department, which is aware of Matthew’s detention and is in contact with local authorities in India”, it wrote.Political potshotsTaking aim at the Modi government over the latest development in VanDyke’s case, Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in a video posted on X questioned the Indian government’s priorities, “Matthew VanDyke is not the priority…priority is that nobody should protest against the election commissioner…Had he wanted to raise the Indian flag, that could have been a big ‘national security threat’.”He was referring to the past month, when security forces were deployed in larger numbers in the national capital to prevent the CJP-led protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists.