Elgar case: HC dismisses bail appeal of Navlakha

The Bombay high court on Monday dismissed a statutory bail appeal of activist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Elgar Parishad Maoist links case, saying it sees no reason to interfere with a special court’s “well reasoned order” which earlier refused him bail. A bench of justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik said the 34 days that Navlakha spent under house arrest in 2018 could not be counted as the period spent in custody for consideration of the statutory bail. The civil rights activist was arrested by the Pune police on August 28, 2018, but not taken in custody. Between August 28 and October 1, 2018, Navlakha was kept under house arrest. He also spent 11 days in the National Investigation Agency’s custody from April 14 to April 25 last year, after he surrendered following re-registration of an FIR against him in January 2020. Since then, Navlakha has remained in judicial custody and is lodged at the Taloja jail in neighbouring Navi Mumbai.

AMRITSAR : A high-level delegation of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) would soon meet Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat to seek possession of the site of the historic Gurdwara Gian Godri Sahib at Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar. The gurdwara was demolished in 1984 and is now dotted with commercial outlets and other buildings. For the past few years, the Sikh community is demanding that it be re-established there.

SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur who conducted a meeting of a sub-committee constituted on the issue at the SGPC headquarters on Monday, said, “The sentiments of the sangat are connected with the historic gurdwara. Efforts are being made by the SGPC to re-establish the gurdwara at Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar. For this, a delegation of SGPC would be meeting the Uttarakhand CM.”

She said she would also be part of this delegation. HTC

KARNAL: The arrest of a 59-yearold Karnal farmer, Sukhdev Singh, for his alleged involvement in the January 26 violence at Red Fort, Delhi, has come as a shock to his family members.

“My father is a decent and law-abiding man. He has never been involved in any criminal activity,” said Amarjit Singh, the younger son of Sukhdev, claiming that not even a single member of his family has faced any police case.

He said that his father is associated with BKU (Charuni) and had gone to Delhi on December 26 and said that he will come only after the three farm laws are repealed.

“He was staying at Singhi border and used make phone calls to us regularly. I had talked to him three days before his arrest,” he added.

“On Sunday evening, I got a phone call from a cop of the crime branch of Delhi Police. They told me about my father’s arrest from Chandigarh. We don’t know how he reached Chandigarh from Singhu border,” he said.

Sukhdev owns 21 acre agricultural land at Sanghoi village and lives in a dera about 10km from Karnal with his family.

Amarjit did not rule out the possibility that his father had gone to the Red Fort. “Hundreds of farmers were at Red Fort. That doesn’t mean that he was involved in hoisting the Nisan Sahib,” he added.