New Delhi: The Supreme Court has granted bail to scholar and activist Shoma Sen who has been jailed for close to six years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in the Elgar Parishad case.
Sen is based in Nagpur and was arrested on June 6, 2018 by the Pune Police. She has been in custody since then. The National Investigation Agency took over the case in the meantime. It is yet to go to trial.
LiveLaw has reported that a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Augustine George Masih held that the restriction for grant of bail as per Section 43D(5) of the UAPA would not apply in the case of Sen.
The bench said that Sen was of advanced age and had several ailments. It also took into account her prolonged incarceration, the delay in the commencement of trial and the nature of the accusations.
Conditions
The apex court ordered Sen to not leave Maharashtra without informing a special court, to surrender her passport, give her address and mobile number to the investigating officer and to keep the location and GPS tracker her mobile phone active throughout the period of bail. The bench also said that her device should be paired with the device of the investigating officer so that her location is known.
Incidentally, a report by a US-based digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, had held that a cyber attacker had used malware to infiltrate a laptop belonging to co-accused activist Rona Wilson before his arrest. Sen had said in her bail plea to the Bombay high court that the entire case against her was built on electronic evidence that the NIA claimed to have recovered from Wilson’s computer.
Earlier, the NIA had told the court that further custody of Sen was not required. As The Wire noted then, all along, and as recently as in December 2023, the agency had vehemently opposed her bail application both in the lower court and the Supreme Court.
The Elgar Parishad case has been noteworthy for its arrest of 16 eminent scholars and activists. Criticism of their prolonged incarceration has come in from the world over.
Sen is among few accused who have got bail. In 2021, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj got default bail.
In 2022, activist Anand Teltumbde got bail on merits. In 2022, poet Varavara Rao was given bail by the Supreme Court on medical grounds.
In 2023, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira also got bail on merits. That year, writer Gautam Navlakha was shifted to house arrest due to his ill health.
Navlakha and Mahesh Raut were given bail by the Bombay high court on merits, but the order was stayed by the same court and extended by the Supreme Court.
Amidst fervent pleas by the families of the accused for attention to an alleged lack of medical care, one of them, Father Stan Swamy, passed away in custody in July 2021 while the COVID pandemic raged.
Others who are still in prison are Jyoti Jagtap, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Mahesh Raut, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson and Hany Babu.
