The Bombay High Court on Monday, 17 October, rejected the regular bail plea application filed by Jyoti Jagtap, arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case.
Jagtap, reportedly a member of a banned cultural performance group called Kabir Kala Manch, was arrested by the NIA in 2020.
She had approached the High Court after a NIA special court rejected her bail application on 14 February this year.
However, a bench of justices AS Gadkari and Milind Jadhav, while rejecting her appeal observed that the NIA case was prima facie true and the appeal challenging the rejection of bail by the special court stood dismissed considering the material against her, Bar and Bench reported.
The NIA has said that Jagtap was one of the organisers of the Elgar Parishad on 31 December 2017, that triggered violence on the subsequent day.
The NIA, which was represented by advocate Sandesh Patil, further contended in court that another accused in the case - Milind Teltumbde who died last year, had discussed the Elgar Parishad event with three members from the Karbir Kala Manch.
It also said alleged that Maoist ideology was spread at the event via these three people and others. Jagtap, the agency claimed, was one of the key conspirators.
Jagtap, denying these allegations, has said that the central agency had nothing on record to prove that she was a member of Kabir Kala Manch or that she had furthered CPI (Maoist) agenda, LiveLaw reported.
She has also argued, in her bail application filed through Advocate Kritika Aggarwal, that she is an artist and a singer from a marginalised community and had worked with several NGOs.
She wasn't absconding or named in the Pune Polices' first chargesheet, she said.
While the case was transferred to NIA, the agency hadn't unearthed anything new against her, warranting the arrest, she argued.
Meanwhile, Senior Advocate Mihir Desai for Jagtap, pointed out that using the concept of front organisation is fundamentally flawed.
"Frontal organisations has to be notified (as a banned organisation) in some form and by its very nature means that not everybody is part of the main organisation. Frontal organisations are controlled by the party, but not everybody may be part of it," Desai said, according to LiveLaw.
(With inputs from Bar and Bench, LiveLaw)
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