The Bombay High Court on Wednesday rejected the review plea of three accused in the Bhima Koregaon violence — Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves. A division bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamadar, while hearing a plea filed by Surendra Gadling, Varavara Rao, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Vernon Gonsalves, and Arun Ferreira, stated that there was no factual error in the December 2021 judgment as claimed by the three accused while denying them default bail.
“The applications of bail were not placed before the court. Hence we cannot agree that there was factual error. No case of exercising jursidiction is made out. We clarify that observations in previous judgement are based on documents placed before us. The application stands rejected,” the court ruled, according to Bar and Bench.
In the present plea filed through advocate R Satyanarayanan, they submitted that if the factual error was not rectified it will lead to “gross miscarriage of justice”.
According to the court, three accused were not granted bail as they did not apply for it within the stipulated period of 60 days after their arrest and before the filing of charge sheet. That was required to be corrected as the three accused could not avail the order which had been upheld by the Supreme Court.
As many as 16 activists were slapped with sedition charges and booked under several sections of the Unlawful Activities and Prevention Act (UAPA) by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for their alleged roles in the Bhima Koregaon violence case of 2018. The NIA had accused them of hatching a plot to overthrow the government.
Rao was granted bail on medical grounds till March 3. Only Bharadwaj has been granted bail so far, while the rest are still in prison. One of those arrested, Father Stan Swamy, passed away last year ahead of his bail hearing.
