MP Navneet Rana, her MLA-husband walk out of jail

Mumbai, May 5

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Independent MP Navneet Rana and her MLA-husband Ravi Rana walked out of jail on Thursday, a day after a Mumbai court granted them bail, more than a week after they were arrested in an alleged case of sedition.

After they were granted bail on Wednesday, the necessary documents had not timely reached the prisons where they were lodged.

On Thursday, Navneet Rana, the Lok Sabha memer from Amravati in Maharashtra, came out of the Byculla women’s jail in south Mumbai around 2 pm, an official said.

She waved at mediapersons and then headed for suburban Bandra in a police escort.

Navneet Rana’s lawyer told the media that the MP was unwell, her blood pressure had increased, she had bodyache and spondylitis.

She will be taken to a private hospital for a check-up and doctors will decide further course of treatment, the lawyer said.

Later, the parliamentarian’s husband Ravi Rana, the MLA from Badnera in Amravati, was also released from the Taloja jail in neighbouring Navi Mumbai around 4 pm.

The bail box of the jail opened at 3.30 pm following which his release formalities were completed, the official said.

Heavy security was deployed outside the Taloja jail, he added.

The Rana couple was arrested on April 23 by the Khar police here under sections 124 (A) (sedition) and 153 (A) (promoting enmity between different groups) of the Indian Penal Code.

The couple had announced that they would recite the Hanuman Chalisa outside Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s private residence ‘Matoshree’ here, which angered workers of the Shiv Sena, Thackeray’s party, leading to tension.

The couple later dropped the plan, citing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the city the next day.

But the police, nonetheless, booked them for sedition and ‘promoting enmity between different groups’, among other offences.

The special court for hearing cases against MPs and MLAs laid down several conditions while granting them bail on Wednesday.