The Supreme Court has asked the Karnataka government to respond to a plea for interim bail by 21 anti-CAA-NPR-NRC protesters on the ground of the Covid-19 pandemic in the case wherein their agitation has resulted in police firing, causing the death of two persons in Mangaluru.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notice to the state government on the application filed by Ashik alias Mohammad Asik and others, seeking its reply within two weeks.
The petitioners, led by senior advocate R Basant and Haris Beeran, contended that they were involved in peaceful protests only but the police resorted to the firing leading to the death of two persons.
They said they have been in custody for more than seven months since December 22, 2019, and the police have already filed its charge sheet, so they were no more required for investigation.
The petitioners were already granted bail by the Karnataka High Court on February 17. However, this order was stayed by the apex court on March 6.
In its plea, the petitioners said after the apex court's order of March 6, "the scenario has considerably changed with the fatal spread of Covid-19 pandemic throughout the country and the world."
It has, therefore, become necessary not to keep undertrials unnecessarily detained as it would lead to overcrowding of jails and may cause the spread of the virus, they said.
Maintaining that they had already suffered police brutality, the petitioners contended that rejecting their plea for interim bail would cause irreparable injury to them and could result in death, not to mention the risk posed to the public at large as a result of further transmission.