Elgaar Parishad case: Bombay HC disposes of Shoma Sen’s bail plea, asks her to approach special NIA court

The division bench of Justice Ajey S Gadkari and Justice Prakash D Naik said the special NIA court did not get a chance to consider the bail application after the supplementary chargesheet was filed in the case and, therefore, asked Sen to approach the trial court for the same. “In the event, the court rejects the bail plea, then the High Court can take benefit of the observations of the subordinate court on the chargesheet,” the bench said and disposed of the plea.

In her plea, Sen had alleged she was falsely implicated and arrested in the case as she had exposed illegal arrests and tortures. She said the probing agency had committed deliberate and conscious omissions pertaining to electronic evidence allegedly seized by it from a co-accused against her. Sen had claimed the letters allegedly containing incriminating material against her were “neither in her possession, nor addressed to her, or written by her” and merely because her name is mentioned in the so-called electronic letters cannot be a reasonable ground to deny bail to her.

Sen had claimed the communications allegedly found from a computer or hard disks of her co-accused had merely mentioned the name of the lawful and registered organisation Anuradha Gandhy Memorial Committee, and the same cannot be sufficient ground to brand such an organisation as a frontal organisation of the banned CPI(Maoist) and it was “unreasonable, unfair and unjust act” by the investigating agency.

She had also filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2021 challenging her prosecution under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act citing in support the report of a US-based digital consultant that says the “incriminating evidence” found by investigators in co-accused Rona Wilson’s laptop was ‘planted.’

The High Court had last heard Sen’s writ plea on April 19, 2022, when Justice Sadhana S Jadhav had recused herself from hearing the Elgaar Parishad matters, after which it has not come up for the hearing before the High Court.