Bail plea of former DU Prof Saibaba rejected

The Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Tuesday rejected the bail application offormer Delhi University professor G N Saibaba, who is serving life sentence in a prison here for links with Maoists.

Saibaba, who is wheelchair-bound with over 90 per cent physical disability, had filed the bail application on medical grounds, saying his weak health along with comorbities make him vulnerable to contract the coronavirus infection in jail.

The former university professor, convicted in March 2017 for links with Maoists, is currently lodged in the Nagpur Central Jail.

A division bench of Justices A S Chandurkar and Amit Borkar here on Tuesday said it was not inclined to grant bail, and rejected the plea.

Saibaba, in his plea filed through advocate Nihalsingh Rathod, sought bail for 45 days on medial grounds so that he could get treatment outside and also meet his mother, who is suffering from cancer, in Hyderabad.

He submitted that he was suffering from various life threatening ailments and was prone to contracting COVID-19 after the outbreak of the disease in the jail. He also said that he was not getting proper medical treatment in the jail.

However, special public prosecutor P K Sathianathan opposed the bail plea, saying the petitioner was lodged in a separate jail wing where inmates were are not in contact with those lodged in other wings of the prison.

Also, the prison staff who tested positive for coronavirus were admitted in government hospital, and the staff deployed at the prison had tested negative. All preventive measures are being taken in the prison, he said.