Bail order an indictment of NIA

The grant of bail to activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira by the Supreme Court in the Bhima-Koregaon case is welcome, but unfortunately it is yet another case of delayed justice in which the process has become the punishment. The two have been in jail for about five years, charged under the draconian UAPA, which makes bail almost impossible to get. They were accused of handling funds and recruitment and training of youths for a banned outfit. These are serious charges and the two got bail from the highest court eight months after another accused, Anand Teltumbde, got bail from the Bombay High Court. The importance of the bail for the two activists is that they got it on the merits of the case. In a PMLA case, the innocence of the accused is not taken for granted, and courts do not go into the evidence at the bail stage. But the fact that the court found the evidence against the two activists flimsy underlines the suspicions that the case again them, as also against the other accused, were likely made up.

The NIA has charged 16 persons in the Bhima-Koregaon case with the most serious offences. It is for the first time that the court has gone in detail into the charges and found that they may not be true. Lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj was released on technical grounds as the chargesheet again her was not filed in time. Poet Varavara Rao was released on medical grounds. Teltumbde was released as the court found no prima facie evidence of his involvement in terrorist activities. Another accused, Gautam Navlakha, is under house arrest. Father Stan Swamy died in jail. The court’s order in this case has implications that go beyond the case.

The court found no evidence to link the two activists to any conspiracy and noted that the letters and the witness statements which were produced by the NIA were of poor evidential quality. It also observed that “mere participation in seminars cannot constitute an offence’’ under the bail-denying UAPA. The court said that it was not enough if the association of the accused with the banned outfit is proved; the NIA has to establish the intention of the accused to further its terror objectives. The mere possession of the outfit’s literature would also not attract the UAPA. These observations are particularly important in the light of reports that evidence may have been planted in the activists’ homes or computers. The court’s order can only be taken as an indictment of the NIA.