Sukanya Shantha 
Mumbai: After over six years and six months of incarceration, the Bombay high court today, January 9, granted bail to two human rights defenders, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale.
Both Wilson and Dhawale were among the first group of human rights activists to be arrested in the highly contentious Elgar Parishad case over what law enforcement claimed was their alleged Maoist links. Their bail in the high court, granted by a bench of Justice A.S. Gadkari and Justice Kamal Khata, came after an appeal was filed by their lawyers following rejections by the trial court.
On June 6, 2018, in a coordinated operation, the Pune police had sent several teams to various locations across India where activists were based. Wilson, originally from Kerala, was arrested in Delhi, a place where he had lived and worked from for many years as a prisoners’ rights activist. Dhawale, an editor of the Vidrohi magazine, was picked up from his residence in Mumbai.
The case, which was originally handled by the Pune police, was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in early 2020 after the BJP government fell in Maharashtra and the Mahavikas Aghadi coalition took over. All along, both the Pune police and the NIA have maintained that Wilson was one of the masterminds of the so-called “urban Naxal” movement and was involved in introducing young students from universities to it.
NIA’s stance
However, when lawyers Sudeep Pasbola (representing Wilson) and Mihir Desai (representing Dhawale) argued that the two had spent close to seven years in jail and that the NIA had failed to even frame charges in the case, the latter did not try to defend their application. In the chargesheet and the several supplementary chargesheets filed in the case, the NIA named over 300 witnesses. The defense lawyers argued that examining these witnesses would take a long time, and keeping a pretrial detainee for that long is excessive.
While the NIA did claim before the high court that it would “expedite the trial” in the case, it did not principally oppose the bail application. Desai confirmed that when Justice Gadkari and Khata granted the two human rights defenders bail today, the NIA did not ask for a stay on the order or for time to appeal before the high court. In the past, the NIA has immediately moved for a stay order and rushed to the Supreme Court in similar orders. This, notably, happened for Mahesh Raut, who had secured bail from the Bombay high court, but the appeal has been pending in the apex court for over a year.
While the detailed bail order is awaited, Desai confirmed that Wilson and Dhawale have been directed to visit the NIA office on Monday every week. He also said that the bail was granted against a surety sum of Rs. 1 lakh.
The 16 arrested in connection with the Elgar Parishad case. Photo: The Wire.
The NIA’s case against 16 individuals, which includes human rights activists, lawyers, and academics, is that they are all part of the banned CPI (Maoist) organisation. The Pune police had also claimed that the accused persons had planned to carry out a “Rajiv Gandhi-style assassination” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Also read: Elgar Parishad Prisoners’ Hunger Strike Marks a Momentous Victory for Prison Rights
Malware and sustained punishment
In the past seven years, while the NIA has made several claims, it has not made any concrete attempt to go to trial in the case, a typical style adopted by the central agency of prolonging detention and not focusing as much on the trial. The process itself becomes a punishment in such politically motivated cases.
The Wire, as part of the international consortium ‘The Pegasus Project,’ had investigated the use of the sinister malware Pegasus in the phones of many human rights defenders, including Wilson. Investigations carried out by many independent experts also found similar use of Pegasus malware in the phones of Wilson and other accused persons.
The courts, however, didn’t consider these crucial findings, and the rights activists have been in prison all this time.
Of the 16 persons arrested, one 84-year-old activist and Jesuit priest, Stan Swamy, died in July 2021. His co-accused and several other incarcerated individuals from Taloja Central Jail had accused the prison authorities of negligence and failing to provide adequate medical care on time, leading to his death in custody.
Over the years, a few individuals, including poet Varavara Rao, activist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, academic Shoma Sen, activist Vernon Gonsalves, lawyer Arun Ferreira, author and academic Anand Teltumbde, and journalist and activist Gautam Navalakha, have been released on bail. The remaining individuals, who continue to be incarcerated, include Delhi University professor Hany Babu, activist Mahesh Raut, lawyer Surendra Gadling, and cultural activists Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, and Jyoti Jagtap. Almost all of those who are yet to be released have their bail applications or appeals against the stay on their bail orders pending in different courts.
Today’s bail order of Wilson and Dhawale on the grounds of prolonged incarceration will add impetus to these pending applications.