Court allows video recording of Ekbote’s bail proceedings

In a bid to ensure transparency in the court proceedings, a Pune sessions court on Thursday accepted to conduct video recording of hearing on the bail application moved by right-wing Hindu activist Milind Ekbote. This comes in response to a plea moved by activist Sanjay Bhalerao apprehending that the government can favour Ekbote, accused of orchestrating the Bhima-Koregaon violence.

Ekbote, the founder of Samast Hindu Aghadi, is one of the prime accused in the Bhima-Koregaon riots case, which is being probed by the Pune police. He was arrested earlier this month after the Supreme Court and also the Bombay High Court refused to grant pre-arrest relief to him. He was booked under the charges of attempt to murder, atrocities against Dalit and also of inciting violence.

Having been arrested, Ekbote had moved an application seeking bail and even before the special court could hear his plea, activist Bhalekar filed an intervention application through his counsel Nitin Satpute. The intervention application sought video recording of Ekbote’s bail hearing and also of conducting a narco test on him.

Advocate Nitin Satpute confirmed the news and said, “We had moved the application for video recording of Ekbote’s bail proceedings. We had cited the legal provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention

An activist apprehended that the ‘pro-Hindu’ govt can favour the Hindu leader

of Atrocities) Act, which contemplate video recording of the proceedings to ensure transparency.”

“Apart from the legal provisions, we moved this plea to ensure that the government does not favour the accused Ekbote. We feared that Ekbote being a Hindu leader can be favoured by the government which is often seen to be a pro-Hindu government. Thus, we wanted to ensure that there is transparency in the proceedings and that no benefit or favour is done to Ekbote,” advocate Satpute added.

The court has only allowed the video recording of the bail proceedings and this is the first ever case in Pune in wherein the court proceedings would be recorded. The court has however refused to allow narco test on Ekbote as the prosecuting team has already proposed to do the same. The court would hear the bail plea on April 4.