Bhima Koregaon: Supreme Court extends Bombay High Court stay on bail to Mahesh Raut

The Supreme Court on Wednesday extended till October 5 the stay imposed by the Bombay High Court on its order granting bail to Mahesh Raut, one of the accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence case. [National Investigation Agency v. Mahesh Sitaram Raut and anr]

A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi passed the order on the appeal filed by National Investigation Agency (NIA) before the apex court challenging the High Court's bail order.

Earlier this month, the Bombay High Court had granted bail to Raut but had stayed its order for a week after the NIA sought time to file appeal before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court today listed the matter for hearing on October 5 and clarified that the stay on bail will continue till then.

Raut was arrested in June 2018 and has been in custody since.

Raut had approached the Bombay High Court for bail after a special NIA court rejected his bail plea in November 2021.

He claimed to be a forest rights activist and a former fellow of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Rural Development Programme.

The NIA alleged that Raut recruited young students from colleges into the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The High Court, however, granted him bail observing that merely because a co-accused has claimed that he handed over money to Raut, it would not make Raut a recipient of the same as there was nothing else to corroborate the claim.

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

Another accused, Gautam Navlakha, was placed under house arrest instead of being lodged in jail after a Supreme Court order to that effect.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju and advocate Kanu Agrawal appeared for the NIA before the Supreme Court today.