Supreme Court dismisses NIA plea against Teltumbde's bail

New Delhi: After the National Investigating Agency (NIA) filed a petition against scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the same.

An apex court bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli said that it could not interfere with the Bombay High Court order granting bail to Teltumbde, who was accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, PTI reported.

It was on November 18, the Bombay HC granted bail to the scholar. It had noted that prima facie, the only case made out against him relates to alleged association with a terror group and support given to it, for which the maximum punishment is ten years in jail.

But the high court reserved its bail order for a week, allowing NIA to approach the top court.

Seventy-three-year-old Anand Teltumbde, a former IIT professor and activist for Dalit rights, is third among 16 arrestees in the case to be released on bail. Poet Varavara Rao is currently out on bail on health grounds, while lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj is out on regular bail.

The case in question stems from alleged inflammatory remarks made at the Elgar Parishad conference in Shaniwarwada, Pune, on December 31, 2017, which, according to the police, led to unrest the following day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the city.

The violence resulted in the death of one person and the injury of numerous more. Before the NIA took over the investigation, the Pune police had been looking into the case in which more than a dozen activists and academicians have been listed as suspects.