NIA Court rejects plea by senior Maoist leader Kirankumar seeking bail, discharge in Gadchiroli Naxal attack

A Mumbai Court recently rejected the bail and discharge plea of Maoist leader Sathyanarayana Rani alias Kirankumar, husband of leader Narmada Akka for his alleged involvement in the Gadchiroli Naxal attack of 2019 which had resulted in the death of 15 police personnel and one civilian.

The incident involved burning of 27 vehicles of an infrastructure company and detonation of a pressure bomb in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli in May 2019.

It was the prosecution's case that over 90-100 Naxalites had set fire to the vehicles and the senior Maoist leaders among them were members of the Community Party of Indian (Maoist).

The prosecution had arrested the couple after a search and seized electronic devices and cash amount of ₹10.32 lakhs.

It was revealed after further investigation that the Maoist leaders were part of a larger conspiracy and participated in the terrorist act.

"They were the part of the team which planned to take revenge by carrying out blast. The applicant (Kirankumar) had participated in the meeting wherein a conspiracy was hatched in the month of July 2018 to ambush security forces and avenge the killing of 40 Naxals," the order stated

Kirankumar contended that he had been falsely implicated in the case as he had no concern with the blast. He had never been a member of banned organisation either.

On these grounds he filed for discharge and bail.

The Special Court under the National Investigation Agency (NIA) observed that "it is not necessary that each one of the conspirators must have actively participated in the commission of the offence or was involved in it from start to finish. What is important is that they were involved in the conspiracy"

Special NIA Judge DE Kothalikar held that there seemed to be sufficient material to establish that the criminal conspiracy was hatched by the applicant (Kirankumar).

"After having analyzed the documents and the statements forming part of the charge sheet in my considered opinion, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the accusations made against the applicant are prima facie true and therefore it cannot be said that the applicant has made out a case for grant of bail," the order said.