Bombay HC Grants Bail To Mahesh Raut

The Bombay High Court has granted bail to Mahesh Raut, one of the accused persons in the Bhima Koregaon riots case. The division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Sharmila Deshmukh passed the order after staying teh order for a week when the NIA had taken time to file appeal against the same before the Supreme Court.

Mahesh Raut is the sixth person to gert bail in the Bhima Koregaon case after Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira.

He was arrested in 2018 and has been in custody ever since. He approached the High Court after a special NIA court had rejected his bail plea in 2021. He was a forest rights activist and a former fellow of the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Programme, working with the Gadchiroli Collector.

He did his degree from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The Counsel who appeared for him prayed that his bail be granted on grounds of parity with co-accused mentioned above. He also based his prayers on the ground that that he has already spent five years in custody and hence must have been released as the trial was yet to begin.

His Counsel also contented that the arrest was based on documents from the computer of co-accused Rona Wilson and he alleged that Raut had never signed it.

The Additional Solicitor General with other Counsels who represented NIA had opposed the bail on grounds that he had alleged commited acts which are against the society and that he was an accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) where there was a compromise against the interests of State, Societyt and the Unity, Integrity, Security and Sovereignty of India. They also based their contentions on the evidence that allegedly showed that the Communist Party of India( Maoist) had given him Rs. 5 lakhs, besides paying similar amounts to Surendra Gadling and Sudhir Dhawale.