Bombay HC Allows Sudha Bharadwaj To Attend Her Father's Post-Funeral Rituals

Lawyer and civil rights activist Sudha Bharadwaj has been granted temporary bail by the Bombay High Court to attend her father's post-funeral rituals and rites at Bangalore for a couple of days. Bharadwaj has been in Pune's Yerwada Central Jail since last October in relation to allegations for inciting the caste-based violence that took place at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018.

Justice SV Kotwal on Thursday allowed Bharadwaj's plea filed by her counsel Dr.Yug Mohit Chaudhary and directed Pune police to escort her to Bangalore in plain clothes.

Chaudhary informed the bench that her father Professor Ranganath Bharadwaj died on August 6 and sought temporary bail for Bharadwaj to attend the rituals.

As she could not attend the funeral, she should be given a few days to spend time with her daughter and attend the 13th day rituals, Chaudhary argued.

She will be taken to Bangalore on August 17. After staying there for two days, she will be escorted back to Yerawada Central Jail on August 20.

The Pune Police arrested Bharadwaj from her residence in Haryana on August 28, 2018 in relation to the Bhima-Koregaon case. She was kept under house arrest till October following the intervention of the Supreme Court. After the SC rejected the plea for SIT probe into the arrests of Bharadwaj and four other activists, she was taken to Pune by Maharashtra police.

Meanwhile, bail applications filed by Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira will be heard from August 27. High Court has already reserved order in 65-year-old activist Gautam Navlakha's bail plea.

Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Gautam Navlakha are the other activists who were arrested on August 28, 2018 in different states by the Pune Police on suspected Maoist links.