Elgar parishad case: Activist Arun Ferreira seeks default bail on parity with co-accused Sudha Bharadwaj

Activist Arun Ferreira, who has been behind bars since his arrest in 2018 in the Elgar Parishad case, has sought default bail on the ground of parity before the Bombay High Court.

Ferreira said that the co-accused in the case, activist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, was granted default bail by the high court in December 2021 and he should get the same.

In his petition filed through advocate Satyanarayanan R, Ferreira said that “the only distinguishing factor [between Bharadwaj’s case and his] is that while Ferreira filed the default bail application [in the lower court] on the 94th day, co-accused Sudha Bharadwaj filed it on the 91st day.”

Ferreira pointed to Bharadwaj’s bail order and said that the high court had ruled that the Pune sessions court, which had granted an extension of time to the police for the filing of a chargesheet after the mandatory 90-day period for the same was over, did not have the jurisdiction to do so.

“The benefits of this finding need to be extended to this applicant [Ferreira] as well. Thus, if the special court order is held to be without jurisdiction, then the benefit accorded to Sudha Bharadwaj ought to be extended to the present applicant too,” the petition stated.

Ferreira was arrested on August 28, 2018. Since the investigating agency did not file a chargesheet within time and had sought an extension, Ferreira filed a default bail plea on November 30, 2018.

The high court bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamadar had granted default bail to Bharadwaj in December 2021 but had refused to do so for the other eight accused. The court had reasoned that these eight accused, including Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, and Ferreira, had not exercised their right to seek default bail in time.

It had observed that while Bharadwaj had filed a plea before the Pune court seeking default bail as soon as the 90 day period for the filing of the chargesheet got over, the other eight accused had delayed the filing of their applications.

In June 2019, before the Bombay High Court, a common application was filed by Ferreira and eight other accused in the case seeking default bail on the ground that the special court in Pune did not have the jurisdiction to take cognisance of the chargesheet filed by the Pune police, which was initially probing the case.

In September 2019, this common application was rejected by the court. The nine accused then approached the Bombay High Court in appeal. In December 2021, the high court granted default bail only to accused Sudha Bharadwaj but rejected the pleas of the eight other accused.

The accused then filed a review petition, which was also rejected by the high court this year. Following this, Ferreira filed a petition seeking default bail.

Ferreira and the other accused are booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for waging war against the nation, being members of the banned terror outfit CPI (Maoist) and propagating Maoist ideology.

READ | Mumbai court allows ED to question Elgar Parishad case accused Surendra Gadling

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