'Relax Bail Condition, Allow To Go To Kerala' : Plea Of Abdul Nazar Maudany In Supreme Court In 2008 Bengaluru Bomb Blast Case

The PDP leader, along with 31 others, was booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 for his alleged involvement in a series of bomb blasts on July 25, 2008, in Bengaluru that left one person dead and 20 injured. He was named as the thirty-first accused in a chargesheet filed by the police on the strength of certain confessions made by suspected T. Nazir, Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, linking Maudany to the deadly attacks.

He was also implicated in the 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts in which 58 people were killed, although he was later acquitted by a trial court. In the Bengaluru bomb blast case, Maudany was granted bail by the top court in 2014 since he had already been incarcerated for four years till then and was suffering from various health ailments. The condition engrafted by the court on the permission to release him from jail was that he would not leave the city of Bengaluru during the pendency of his trial, to allow the investigative agency to monitor his movements.

However, once again, Maudany has urged the Supreme Court to ease up on him and allow him to stay in his hometown in Kerala. The relaxation has been sought on the ground that the government’s undertaking assuring that the trial would be concluded within four months from November 2014, had lapsed. After the trial was shifted to a special court for Central Bureau of Investigation’s cases, the presiding officer had indicated that he would require two years to conclude the trial. However, more than seven years have passed since he was granted bail and the trial has still not been concluded, the application has informed the top court, blaming the delay on the ‘lethargic attitude’ of the respondent. Maudany has further claimed, “The progress of the case before the trial court is crawling at snail’s pace and the progress was hampered on several occasion due to various reasons not attributable to the applicant, such as the COVID-19 outbreak.” The application states:

“Present stage of the case indicates that the prosecution has no inclination to commence the final arguments…It has already been 12 years since the arrest, of which 8 years has been spent in Bangalore on conditional bail. The applicant has only spent 25 days in his hometown in Kerala in the last 13 years.”

Other than this, Maudany has provided a list of physical and mental ailments that he is suffering from, including Type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, cervical and lumbar spondylosis, and depression and anxiety, etc. Furthermore, ever since he was remanded to custody, he was denied proper and timely treatment on account of which he lost total vision in his right eye and has been suffering from diminished vision in the left eye, the applicant has claimed. The application states,

“A reputed hospital ‘Sreedhareeyam Ayurvedic Eye Hospital and Research Centre’ at Koothattukum, Ernakulam District, Kerala had offered to treat him with traditional Ayurveda method of treatment which was also not carried out due to the embargo placed on his movement outside the jurisdiction of the Bengaluru city civil and sessions court.”

The terror-accused is also paraplegic, having lost his right leg in an explosive attack, and is wheelchair-bound. The host of maladies, as well as his physical disability, makes it prohibitively expensive to live in a metropolitan city like Bengaluru, the applicant has submitted. He has added:

“Paying for attendants and caretaker amid other expenses of living in a city such as Bengaluru have caused irreparable financial implications and the same continues to do so since he cannot go to his hometown in Kerala where he can be properly looked after as his worsening medical conditions demands. He also finds it very onerous and has been driven to a financial condition with little means to pay for such exorbitant rent and other expenses while staying in Bengaluru amidst his frail health condition.”

Besides this, Maudany has also cited the worsening heath conditions of his father, and pointed out that he is not required to be physically present while the court hears the arguments on merits, until specifically required.

A bench of Justices Abdul Nazeer and Krishna Murari had dismissed a similar application filed by the PDP chairman in 2021.

The present applicant has been filed by Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record R.S. Jena on behalf of the applicant.

Case Title

Abdul Nazir Maudany v. State of Karnataka | Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 8084-92 of 2013