Bombay HC grants bail to Anand Teltumbde in Elgar case; order stayed by a week on NIA plea

MUMBAI: Bombay high court bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and MN Jadhav on Friday granted bail on merits to ex-management professor and rights activist Anand Teltumbde in the Elgar Parishad case for alleged Maoist links and for terror offences. Bail is for Rs 1 lakh surety.

The HC stayed its order by a week on request from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) counsel Sandesh Patil. The NIA plans to challenge the bail order before the Supreme Court. This is the first bail on merit in the Elgar case.

The bench had on November 11 reserved for orders the bail application filed by Teltumbde, 73. He is charged under the stringent anti-terror law—UAPA--, in the 2018 Elgar Parishad case from Pune. Teltumbde’s plea on merits filed last year argued that he was never present at the December 31, 2017 Elgar Parishad event nor made any provocative speeches.

Senior counsel Mihir Desai for Teltumbde said no terror acts can be attributed to him even going by the chargesheet and hence there can be no bar to release him on bail under Unlawful Activity (Prevention) Act.
But National Investigation Agency (NIA) opposing his bail plea had through counsel Patil had argued that Teltumbde was secretly in touch with his brother Milind Teltumbde, who was an alleged Maoist leader killed last November in an encounter with security forces in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli area.

Anand Teltumbde has not met his brother in the last 25 years, argued Desai and said NIA is trying a "desperate attempt" to "corroborate" the case against him when there is no corroboration. The NIA says it has a witness who says he was told that the brothers met. Desai had argued it is complete "hearsay" and lacks evidentiary value.

The four main allegations against Teltumbde said Desai are that he was in Pune during Elgar Parishad and was one of the main convenors of the meeting where inflammatory speeches had eventually led to the violence on January 1, 2018; an allegedly incriminating letter of ‘Prakash to Anand’ was from co-accused Rona Wilson’s laptop mentioning his visit to a human rights convention in Paris and “lectures on Dalit issue in order to give traction to Domestic chaos’’. The NIA also alleged he was part of frontal organisations like CPDR.

Desai had also argued that he was at best a co-invitee but had not attended the meeting though in Pune, nor had he given any speeches. Desai said documents recovered allegedly from Wilson’s laptop were not recovered from him and even if hypothetically held against him, cannot lead to his conviction.

The alleged frontal bodies are not banned under any law so merely branding them ‘frontal’ has little meaning, said Desai.

The NIA said Teltumbde had helped with the release of CPI(Maoist) members Murugan and G N Saibaba earlier.
Teltumbde used to attend international conferences and used the ‘foreign Maoist literature’ with approval of the Central Committee of CPI (Maoist) to expand the Maoist movement, alleged NIA.

Attending conferences is no crime said Desai and Teltumbde was an academician who used to get invited abroad and