After being denied bail by a lower court a month ago,a former Excise officer,Viswanath Varadarajan Iyer,was granted bail by Gujarat High Court on November 18 after being put in Surat jail for his alleged role in the training of Maoists in Kerala. Iyer,a member of CPI (Janashakti),was arrested at Nagpur by Surat police in April since his name had figured in the police investigation in connection with training of some alleged Maoists in Kerala,two of them from Gujarat. The training was being imparted allegedly by members of Philippines Communist Party. Along with 60-year-old Viswanath,six others-Jayrambhai Goswami,Makabhai Chaudhari,Kamkhya Chauhan,Satyanarayan Ambade,Niranjan Mahapatra and Ramu alias Jambuwant Pawar-were also granted bail. The police had booked Iyer for anti-national activities amounting to waging a war againt the state. They had slapped him with Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act,2004. Observing that Iyers was a fit case for discretionary bail,Justice Anant Dave said,forming a union or carrying out a movement in respect of labourers and tribals in the area to protect their statutory rights as well as fundamental rights under Constitution of India against a section of influenced and established group of the society and expression of anger or even writing or authoring any document or material or a book,cannot be considered as an anti-national activity amounting to waging a war against the nation. .possession of material pertaining to CPI (Janashakti) Andhra Pradesh,which refers to certain feature of guerilla warfare,anti-Landlord Agrarian Commission and type of public protest against police encounter and operations,without there being any overt act or actual execution of such ideas by itself would not form or constitute any offence. The court observed that Iyer had given permanent address and assured about his availability during the course of trial and hence be released on bail under Section of 439 of the IPC.
