After setback from Ahmedabad court, Teesta Setalvad moves Gujarat HC for bail

The activist was booked a day after the Supreme Court upheld a clean chit given to PM Modi in a Gujarat riots case and observed that 'all those involved in such abuse of process need to be in the dock'.

Activist Teesta Setalvad outside Gheekanta metropolitan court on Sunday. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)

After an Ahmedabad sessions court on July 30 refused to grant bail to Mumbai-based activist Teesta Setalvad, who is facing charges of conspiracy and fabrication of evidence, moved the Gujarat High Court on Monday with a bail plea.

Setalvad, retired IPS officer R B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt were named as accused in an FIR lodged at the Detection of Crime Branch police station in Ahmedabad on June 25, a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition filed by Zakia Jafri, wife of slain Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, in relation to the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Upholding the court-appointed special investigation team’s clean chit to then chief minister Narendra Modi, the apex court had observed that “all those involved in such abuse of process need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law”.

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Setalvad and Sreekumar, both in judicial custody, first moved the Ahmedabad sessions court for bail in July. On July 30, the court rejected their pleas observing that granting bail to them would “encourage” the wrongdoers.
The court further observed that Setalvad’s past conduct showed “she is having [the] nature to derail the investigation in [the] present case if she is enlarged on bail”. It also recorded that Setalvad and Sreekumar, “in [a] conspiracy with others with a view to defame the then CM (Modi) and others, made accusations against [the] government that post-Godhra riots were sponsored by the government”. They had thus “defamed the state not only in [the] country but in [the] world”, the sessions court had added.

Sreekumar is yet to move the high court with a bail plea.

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