Teesta moves Guj HC for bail

AHMEDABAD:Social

activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand on Thursday moved the Gujarat high court against a lower court order rejecting their anticipatory bail plea in a fund embezzlement case.

Setalvad’s petition challenging the lower court order may come up for hearing on Monday in the high court.

The city sessions court had on Wednesday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Setalvad and Anand in the ₹1.4 crore alleged fund embezzlement case related to their NGO Sabrang Trust.

The duo had moved the plea for anticipatory bail following an FIR lodged against them on March 30 this year by complainant Raees Khan Pathan. The Supreme Court had last month granted temporary relief to Setalvad and Anand extending their interim protection from arrest and transit anticipatory bail from May 2 to May 31, granted to them by the Bombay High Court.

The apex court had said that the duo will not be arrested till May 31, but before that they would have to approach the competent court in the state which will decide the matter on merits.

Opposing the bail plea in the lower court, the crime branch of the Gujarat Police had earlier claimed that the couple had misused the money granted to their NGO by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development between 2010 and 2013 for educational purposes, for their “personal and political cause”. PTI