Counsel allowed to visit V Rao in hospital for bail formalities

The Bombay High Court, on Thursday, allowed one of the advocates for jailed Telugu poet and activist Varavara Rao to meet him in the city's Nanavati hospital and obtain his signatures for the formalities pertaining to his bail. A bench of Justices Sambhaji Shinde and Manish Pitale allowed advocate R Sathyanarayan to visit Rao (82) and obtain his signatures.

The judges further allowed senior counsel Anand Grover to move an application on Friday morning, seeking to modify the conditions imposed by the bench while granting bail to Rao on Monday. Notably, Rao was ordered to furnish two sureties of Rs 50,000 each to avail his bail. However, owing to the pandemic, Grover had, on Wednesday, told the judges that obtaining sureties would take a lot of time as the procedure is quite slow and lengthy.

In lieu of the sureties, Grover has urged the judges to allow his client to deposit cash bonds of the same amount and avail bail as of now and submit the sureties in the due course.

The bench is likely to consider this prayer on Friday. Meanwhile, NIA told the bench that it has written to the Home Ministry to challenge Rao's bail order before the apex court.