Bhima Koregaon Case : Supreme Court Adjourns Jyoti Jagtap's Bail Plea; Judgments On Pleas Of Vernon Gonsalves & Arun Ferreira Expected Next Week

A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar was hearing Jagtap’s petition challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision to reject her bail application. She has been lodged in jail since September 2020 for offences under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 after being arrested in connection with the 2018 caste-based violence that broke out at Bhima Koregaon in Pune, and for having alleged links with the proscribed far-left outfit, Communist Party of India (Maoists).

During the brief hearing today, the bench told Advocate-on-Record Aparna Bhat, who was appearing for Jagtap, that the matter will be taken up “after two judgements are delivered in the coming week”, referring to the verdicts on Gonsalves and Ferreira’s bail pleas, which had been reserved by the top court earlier this year, in March.

When Bhat requested the bench for a specific date on which the matter will be heard next, pointing out that the accused had been in custody for three years, Justice Bose said, “A date will be given. Because those two matters have been [pending] for some time. Let the judgement be delivered in these first.” The judge was seen orally directing the registry to ‘give a date’ after the upcoming verdicts.

The bench also allowed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the State of Maharashtra to file their counter-affidavits within three weeks and directed the matter to be listed after four weeks.

Background

Jyoti Jagtap, an activist and member of cultural organisation ‘Kala Kabir Manch’, and 16 others, including Gonsalves and Ferreira, have been accused by the National Investigation Agency of being responsible for the caste violence at Bhima Koregaon in Pune, although one of them – Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy passed away in July 2021.

The Pune police and later, the NIA contended that inflammatory speeches at Elgar Parishad – an event to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima – triggered the violent clashes that broke out between Maratha and Dalit groups near the village of Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra. This led to the 16 activists being arrested for allegedly conspiring and planning the violence and charged with various provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act based on letters and emails primarily retrieved from their electronic devices.

In February of last year, a special NIA court rejected Jagtap’s bail application, which was later upheld by the Bombay High Court in October. While rejecting her application, a division bench of the high court comprising Justices AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav held that dialogues in Kabir Kala Manch’s plays that ridiculed phrases like ‘Ram Mandir’, ‘Gomutra’, and ‘Acche Din’ – aimed at the democratically elected government – incited hatred and indicated a larger conspiracy. The bench held:

“There are a number of innuendos in the text, words, and performance of Kabir Kala Manch which are pointed directly against the democratically elected government, for seeking to overthrow the government, ridicule the government…Kabir Kala Manch admittedly performed and incited hatred and passion by performing on the above agenda in the Elgar Parishad event. There is thus definitely a larger conspiracy within the Elgar Parishad conspiracy by Kabir Kala Manch and Communist Party of India (Maoist).”

Therefore, the court held that the National Investigation Agency’s contention regarding Jagtap having conspired, attempted, advocated and abated the commission of a terrorist act was prima facie true. “The Elgar Parishad event is thus a smaller conspiracy within the larger design and conspiracy of CPI (Maoist) to further its agenda…It is also seen that CPI (Maoist) has chalked out a detailed strategy for furtherance of its objective to overthrow the democratically elected government of our country and the Appellant and other co-accused are prima facie actively strategising the same,” the bench held.

Case Details

Jyoti Jagtap v. National Investigation Agency & Anr. | Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 5997 of 2023