NIA Moves Supreme Court Against Bail Granted To Anand Teltubmde In Bhima Koregaon Case; Matter Listed On Nov 25

The National Investigation Agency has approached the Supreme Court against the Bombay High Court order granting bail to Professor Anand Teltumbde in the Bhima Koregaon case.

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta mentioned the matter before Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud for urgent listing on Thursday. While granting bail on November 18, the High Court had suspended the order for one week.

Agreeing to list the matter on Friday, the CJI asked the Solicitor General to serve copy of the petition to Advocate Aparna Bhat, who is appearing for Teltumbde on caveat.

The 73-year old former IIT professor and Dalit scholar was arrested by the NIA on April 14, 2020, after he surrendered before the agency following Supreme Court orders in connection with the alleged Maoist connections in the Bhima Koregaon case.

While granting bail to Teltubmde, the High Court division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav made a prima facie observation that there was no evidence for the offence of terrorist activity against Teltumbde.

The court noted that Teltumbde had travelled extensively for giving lectures at prestigious institutes like the London School of Economics, Harvard University, MIT, Michigan University and merely because his brother was a wanted CPI(Maoist) accused doesn't implicate him in his alleged links to the banned organisation.

"It is seen that Appellant is a man of intellectual prominence in the field of Dalit ideology / movement and merely because he is the elder brother of wanted accused Milind Teltumbde who had gone underground 30 years ago to espouse the cause of CPI(M) cannot be a sole ground to indict the Appellant and link him to the activities of CPI(M)."