New Delhi: The Supreme Court on January 7 granted over a two-month period of interim bail to self-styled godman Asaram Bapu.
Asaram, who is serving a life sentence in a rape case in which he was convicted by a Gujarat court, will be free till March 31, LiveLaw has reported.
A bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Rajesh Bindal passed the order. The bench has prohibited Asaram from meeting his followers.
The report said that for Asaram, his advocate Devadatt Kamat argued citing his advanced age, history of heart attacks and medical history.
Kamat also argued that the conviction was “based solely on the testimony of the prosecutrix without corroborating evidence and pointed to inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case.”
The court refused to go into the merits.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the State of Gujarat, opposed the plea.
In late October, the Supreme Court noted that if a prisoner is sick or infirm they can be granted bail irrespective of however stringent the law under which they are held is.
However, not everyone has been on the receiving end of this idea.
In 2023, The Wire had reported how a 38-year-old activist who was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police in October on charges of alleged Maoist links suffered a miscarriage in prison a week after a court in Lucknow dismissed her plea for bail on medical grounds of a high-risk pregnancy.
Many of the Elgar Parishad accused, including Shoma Sen, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj and others were disappointed by the courts multiple times as they tried to secure medical bail. One of the accused in the case, octogenarian Father Stan Swamy, passed away in prison after contracting COVID-19. He was denied medical bail despite several serious conditions, including advanced Parkinson’s disease. Rao’s counsel had told the apex court that a delay in attention to his medical needs would prove to be a “death knell.”
Late last year, Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal of a CBI court directed urgent medical intervention for the incarcerated Christian Michel, a British national and armaments consultant, whose medical condition was allegedly misdiagnosed or neglected for five months, calling the disregard to it a travesty of justice.
Academic G.N. Saibaba, who was wheelchair-bound and over 90% handicapped, had said after his release in early 2024 that it was “only by chance” that he had come out of jail alive. He died later that year.
