Will hear Varavara Rao’s medical bail plea on July 11: SC
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear on July 11 an appeal moved by Bhima-koregaon case accused Varavara Rao rejecting his request for permanent medical bail.
A vacation bench of justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala acceded to a request made by senior advocate Anand Grover on behalf of the former professor and a poet, seeking an urgent hearing. Grover pointed out that Rao’s interim bail, granted by the Bombay high court in April, ends on July 13.
“He is 83 years old. There is some urgency. Please, hear this immediately on reopening of the court,” Grover requested the bench. The Supreme Court is currently on summer vacation. The vacation benches will sit till July 8 to hear all urgent matters.
On April 13, the Bombay high court rejected Rao’s plea for a permanent medical bail and permission to shift to Hyderabad in Telangana citing ill health and high expenses in Mumbai. However, the court extended the interim bail, earlier granted to Rao in February, by another three months.
Rao had submitted in the high court that his condition was worsening due to Parkinson’s disease. As he had already spent over two-and-a-half years in custody as an undertrial, his plea maintained, he deserved to be released on permanent medical bail. Rao added that he could stay with his family in Hyderabad where he could have access to good and free medical facilities (the treatment is free for former government employees).
Even as it rejected Rao’s request for permanent medical bail, the high court found substance in his contentions regarding poor medical facilities and other conditions at Taloja central prison and issued certain directives to improve the facilities.
The high court had in April also directed the special NIA court to expedite the trial and conduct it preferably on a dayto-day basis.
Rao is among the activists, lawyers, poets and scholars arrested by the NIA in connection with the Elgar Parishad case. The case pertains to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which, the police claimed, triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-bhima war memorial located on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.