The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to sculptor Jaydeep Apte, who was arrested in September, 2024 for the collapse of the 35-foot statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Sindhudurg district in August, last year. The court granted bail on furnishing a personal bond of Rs. 25,000 among other conditions. A single-judge bench of Justice Nitin R Borkar on Friday granted bail to Apte, who had filed bail plea through advocate Ganesh Sovani. Apte had approached HC after the sessions court rejected his bail plea. The bench said that as the probe was complete in the case, his incarceration was not required. In November, the HC had granted bail to structural consultant Chetan Patil, arrested in connection with the August 26, 2024 Shivaji statue collapse that was inaugurated on December 4, 2023, at the Rajkot Fort in Malvan. Justice Anil S Kilor, granting bail to Patil had observed that there was no case made out to implicate Patil as he had not been appointed as the statue's structural designer and had only submitted a structural stability report for the pedestal of the statue, which was intact even after the collapse. The sessions court had observed that the collapse of the statue within a few months of its construction prima facie spoke upon the quality of work. Apte, in his plea, claimed that the sessions court failed to consider that the FIR was filed in haste by a civil engineer who had no expertise in metallurgy and the case was not based on any scientific report.
