A Delhi court on Tuesday granted Swatantra Bharadwaj, a self-styled influencer, three weeks of interim bail for allegedly attacking the father of a student protester who participated in the agitation organised against the paper leak issue by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in July.
“Weighing all the circumstances, the Court takes into account that the applicant has been in custody for a little over 10 days… a period that should have afforded him time for reflection,” said Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Pratap Singh Laler of the Patiala House Court in his order.
Bharadwaj had recently purportedly admitted to attacking the father of the student protester at Jantar Mantar in a video.
On September 4, relevant sections pertaining to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (SC/ST Act), were added to an earlier FIR registered against Bharadwaj over the alleged attack, amid a protest by CJP supporters and the Indian Youth Congress, as well as Lok Sabha MPs Chandra Shekhar alias Azad and Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav.
In his order on Tuesday, the Judge added, “The case started with offences under Sections 115(2) and 126(2) BNS. These are bailable, and they carry a maximum punishment of one year and one month respectively. For more than two months, the investigating agency did not consider the applicant’s arrest necessary.”
“…It is equally significant that the allegation of caste-based insult, although attributed to the very start of the occurrence, finds no mention in the complaint on which the FIR was registered. It surfaced for the first time about 10 weeks later. A belated allegation is not, for that reason alone, false; nor can this Court decide its truth at the threshold. It is nonetheless a circumstance that bears on the weight to be given to the accusation for the limited purpose of bail,” ASJ Laler added.
The order read, “His (Swatantra Bhardwaj’s) custodial interrogation is complete, and the offences carry a maximum sentence of seven years,” the Court said.
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It was, however, noted by the court that a major concern was the safety of the complainant and his minor daughter. “…in the considered view of this Court, the duty under the Act to protect the victim and the duty under Article 21 to safeguard personal liberty are best reconciled by releasing the applicant on interim bail for three weeks on stringent conditions. His conduct during that period will be observed, and his prayer for regular bail will then be considered in its light,” the court said.
Court flags gaps in probe
Meanwhile, the court imposed certain conditions on the accused — such as a ban on social media posts related to this incident and a bar on contacting the witnesses and the complainant or his family — in the case.
“Whatever is to be decided about the incident of 23.06.2026 must be decided in a court of law, on evidence, and not in public or on social media,” it added.
Speaking on the content of the podcasts where he is purportedly seen admitting to the attack, the court said. “…the Court’s tentative impression is that the material reflects a tendency to boast about the incident rather than any remorse for it…in today’s era, intimidation of a victim no longer requires physical proximity. A public boast about an assault, broadcast to an online audience, reaches the victim and the witnesses as surely as a threat delivered at their doorstep, and often with greater reach and permanence. Social media has thus become a new medium of intimidation.”
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“The abusive and sexually explicit messages sent from several numbers to the complainant and his minor daughter are not, on the present record, traceable to the applicant, and the Court draws no inference against him from them,” the court added.
Bhardwaj was picked up by the Crime Branch officers from his house in Bulandshahr on September 4 and brought to Delhi after securing a transit remand. He had been in judicial custody since September 5.
The same day an FIR was also registered under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and for criminal intimidation based on the protester’s complaint alleging she had received rape threats from Bhardwaj’s supporters.
While granting interim bail to the accused, the court also pulled up the police for leaving significant ground uncovered in the investigation.
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“The investigation, as disclosed in the reply, leaves significant ground uncovered. The podcast forms the central basis of the State’s opposition, and its authenticity is disputed. Yet the reply does not state whether the person who manages the channel has been examined, whether the original footage has been requisitioned, or whether the electronic material has been sent for forensic examination,” ASJ Laler said.
“…the reply is equally silent on several other matters: CCTV footage of the protest site; any recording made by Delhi Police personnel deployed at the gathering; the applicant’s call detail records and location data; information from the social media service providers…These are elementary steps in an investigation of this nature, and they ought to have been taken by now,” he added.
