SC junks order on Saibaba's acquittal
New Delhi, April 19
The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside a Bombay High Court order acquitting former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba and others in a Maoist links case and remanded it back to the high court for fresh adjudication on merits in four months.
A Bench of Justice MR Shah and Justice CT Ravikumar directed the Bombay High Court Chief Justice not to place the appeals of Saibaba and other accused before the same bench which had discharged them and the case be heard by another bench.
Maoist links case
- DU ex-prof Saibaba arrested in 2014 for ‘links’ with Maoists
- Was sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in 2017
- Freed after Bombay HC acquitted him on October 14 last year
The top court, however, kept open the questions of law, including the sanction under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), for adjudication by the new Bench, saying the previous Bench had already formed an opinion on the question of sanction.
“It will be open for the state to argue that sanction need not be considered once an accused is convicted in such a case… We request the high court to dispose of the appeals expeditiously, preferably within four months. It is also observed that propriety demands that on appeal, the matter be placed before another Bench than that which passed impugned order,” the top court said.
More than eight years after his arrest in 2014, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay HC on October 14, 2022, acquitted Saibaba and ordered his release from jail, noting that the sanction order issued to prosecute the accused in the case under the stringent provisions of the UAPA was “bad in law and invalid”.
The high court had allowed Saibaba’s appeal challenging a 2017 order of the trial court convicting of offences under provisions of UAPA and the IPC and sentencing him to life imprisonment.
