Sudha Bharadwaj moves Bombay High Court for default bail

Sudha Bharadwaj, accused in the Bhima Koregaon violence of 2018, has moved the Bombay High Court seeking bail under Section 167(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) on the ground that upon expiry of 90 days of detention, there was no valid or lawful order extending time for the filing of the chargesheet..Lawyer and activist Bharadwaj is one of the accused in the Elgar Parishad event of 2018 which triggered violence at Bhima Koregaon. The allegation against Bharadwaj was that certain documents recovered from Bharadwaj and her co-accused mentioned her activities and showed that she was an ‘active member’ of banned organisation CPI (Maoist).She is currently under detention at Women's Prison in Byculla, Mumbai..In her bail plea under Section 167(2), Bharadwaj contended that the investigation agency had failed to file its chargesheet within the upper limit of 90 days as prescribed under Section 167(2) of CrPC.The chargesheet against Bharadwaj was filed by the Pune Police through the investigation was later taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Bharadwaj claimed that the chargesheet was filed by the Pune police after a period of 90 days, she is entitled to regular bail. .The bail application was listed before the single judge bench of Justice Sarang V Kotwal on Friday.When the matter came up for hearing, advocate (Dr) Yug Mohit Chaudhry contended that legal propriety dictates that the bail application be heard by a Division Bench of the High Court. Chaudhry apprised the Court that, since the case is currently being investigated by NIA, the matter will have to be heard by Division Bench as per the scheme provided under NIA Act. This is so even though the order under challenged was passed before the NIA was given charge of the investigation of the case, he said. Finding force in Chaudhry's submission, Justice Kotwal observed that the scheme of the NIA Act, more specifically Section 21 (2) provides that appeals in cases pertaining to the NIA investigation be heard by a bench of two Judges of the High Court. He also referred to a Supreme Court judgment passed in this regard. He, therefore, directed the registry to place the matter before a Division Bench.