The Bombay High Court on Friday granted temporary bail to lawyer Surendra Gadling, an accused in the Elgaar Parishad-Maoist links case, to enable him to perform certain rituals for his mother who died last year.
Gadling, lodged at Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai, can be out on bail from August 13 to 21, said a division bench of Justices S S Shinde and N J Jamadar. Earlier this year, he had moved the HC through his lawyers R Sathyanarayan and senior counsel Indira Jaising against a lower court's denial of emergency bail to him to attend his mother's funeral when she died of Covid-19 in August 2020.
His lawyers told the HC last week that as most of his family members were either hospitalized or under home isolation then, the last rites and condolence meeting for his mother were yet to be performed.
The family has decided to perform these rites on her first death anniversary on August 15, advocate Jaising told the court, seeking temporary bail for him.
The court granted the request on Friday. Gadling was asked to submit his passport before the special National Investigation Agency court and also his "whole itinerary" for the period of bail.
The HC also directed Gadling to furnish two sureties for Rs 50,000 each. He will have to attend the local police station at 10 am on August 16 and August 19.
He can not leave Nagpur city except for immersing his mother's ashes in the Bina river on August 19, the judges said.
Gadling was arrested in the Elgaar Parishad case on June 6, 2018, and has remained in prison awaiting trial since then. He and several other activists have been arrested in the case for alleged links with the Naxals.