Anand Teltumbde, a civil rights activist and one of the accused in the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon violence case, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on Friday. The court, however, stayed the order’s implementation for a week to allow the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to appeal it to the Supreme Court. This means that Teltumbde, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in the case in April 2020, will be unable to leave until then.
A division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and M N Jadhav granted bail on a surety of one lakh rupees.
Teltumbde is the third accused in the case to be granted bail, following poet Varavara Rao on medical bail and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj on regular bail.
The Elgar case involves alleged inflammatory speeches delivered at the Elgar Parishad conclave on December 31, 2017 in Pune, which, according to police, sparked violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the city’s outskirts. During the violence, one person was killed and several others were injured.
Over a dozen activists and academics have been named as suspects in the case, which was initially investigated by the Pune police before being taken over by the NIA.