You can't jail someone for their ideology: Supreme Court granting bail to Kerala RSS leader murder accused

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to an accused in the 2022 murder of RSS leader Srinivasan in Kerala's Palakkad district.

A bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan granted bail to Abdul Sathar, then secretary general of PFI's Kerala unit, and said as far as the assassination of Srinivasan is concerned, there is no direct role attributed to him.

"You cannot put someone in jail for their ideology. This is the trend we find. It is because they have adopted a particular ideology, they are put in jail," the bench told the counsel appearing for the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

The Kerala High Court on June 25, 2024, granted bail to 17 accused PFI members, who are also facing trial for allegedly instigating communal violence in the state and other parts of the country.

Granting bail to 17 of the 26 accused, the high court imposed stringent conditions, which included sharing their cellphone numbers and real-time GPS locations with the investigating officer.

On December 19, 2022, the Centre, referring to Srinivasan's death, opined there was a larger conspiracy hatched by the leaders of the PFI "which has grave national and international ramifications" that needed to be "thoroughly investigated to unearth the wider conspiracy and to identify the other accused".

The Centre had directed the NIA to take up the probe in the murder case as well, and the agency filed its consolidated charge sheet in 2023 with two supplementary chargesheets later.