Court denies bail to activist Stan Swamy in Elgar Parishad case

Mumbai, March 22

A special NIA court here on Monday rejected the bail plea filed by tribal rights activist Stan Swamy, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.

Additional sessions court judge DE Kothalikar rejected bail pleas of 83-year-old Swamy on merit as well as on medical grounds.

Swamy, a Jesuit priest and activist, was arrested from Ranchi in October 2020, and has since been lodged at the Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai.

As per his lawyers, Swamy is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and he has lost the ability to hear. He also suffers from several other ailments.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had opposed Swamy’s bail plea saying probe had revealed that Swamy was a staunch supporter of organisations such as ‘Vistapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan’ and ‘People’s Union for Civil Liberties’, which were working as “fronts of the CPI (Maoist)”.

Swamy’s lawyer Sharif Shaikh had argued that the NIA had failed to establish Swamy’s connection to the Elgar Parishad-Maoists links case. PTI