Elgar case: Bombay HC grants bail to ex-DU prof Hany Babu
Mumbai (PTI): The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to former Delhi University professor Hany Babu, more than five years after his arrest in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
A division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Bhosale allowed the bail plea of Babu. The detailed order was not available yet.
The HC refused the request of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to stay the bail for enabling it to appeal before the Supreme Court
Hany Babu had sought bail primarily on the ground of prolonged incarceration without trial.
His counsel, Yug Mohit Chaudhary, had also argued that the charges were yet to be framed and their discharge application was still pending before the trial court.
The NIA has accused Hany Babu of being a co-conspirator in propagating Maoist activities and ideology on the instructions of leaders of the banned CPI (Maoist) organisation.
He was arrested in July 2020 in the case and was lodged at the Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai.
The case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches delivered at the Elgar Parishad conclave, held at Shaniwarwada in Pune on December 31, 2017, which police claimed triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon Bhima war memorial located on the city's outskirts.
One person was killed and several others were injured in the violence.
The case, in which more than a dozen activists and academicians had been named accused, was initially probed by the Pune police and later taken over by the NIA.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
