SC suspends Bombay HC judgement discharging G N Saibaba
New Delhi(PTI): The Supreme Court on Saturday suspended the Bombay High Court order acquitting former Delhi University (DU) professor G N Saibaba and others in a Maoist-links case.
The high court acquitted Saibaba and others in the case on Friday.
An apex court bench of justices M R Shah and Bela M Trivedi, which sat on a non-working day to hear the matter, also rejected Saibaba's request for putting him under house arrest in view of his physical disability and health conditions.
It stayed the release of all the accused in the case, including Saibaba, from jail, as directed by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
It sought responses from Saibaba and the other accused on a plea moved by the Maharashtra government against the high court order.
More than eight years after his arrest, the Bombay High Court acquitted Saibaba on Friday 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 Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was "bad in law and invalid".
The Nagpur bench of the high court allowed Saibaba's appeal, challenging a 2017 order of the trial court that convicted him in the case and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Apart from Saibaba, the court acquitted Mahesh Kariman Tirki, Pandu Pora Narote (both farmers), Hem Keshavdatta Mishra (student) and Prashant Sanglikar (journalist), who were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Vijay Tirki (labourer), who was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Narote died during the pendency of the appeal.
Saibaba, 52, who is wheelchair-bound due to a physical disability, is currently lodged in the Nagpur central prison. He was arrested in February 2014.
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Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza, but Israel's stance still uncertain
Jerusalem, May 6: Hamas announced Monday it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but there was no immediate word from Israel, leaving it uncertain whether a deal had been sealed to bring a halt to the seven-month-long war in Gaza.
It was the first glimmer of hope that a deal might avert further bloodshed. Hours earlier, Israel ordered some 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating the southern Gaza town of Rafah, signalling that an attack was imminent. The United States and other key allies of Israel oppose an offensive on Rafah, where around 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza's population, are sheltering.
An official familiar with Israeli thinking said Israeli officials were examining the proposal, but the plan approved by Hamas was not the framework Israel proposed.
An American official also said the US was still waiting to learn more about the Hamas position and whether it reflected an agreement to what had already been signed off on by Israel and international negotiators or something else. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as a stance was still being formulated.
Details of the proposal have not been released. Touring the region last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had pressed Hamas to take the deal, and Egyptian officials said it called for a cease-fire of multiple stages starting with a limited hostage release and some Israeli troop pullbacks from Gaza. The two sides would also negotiate a “permanent calm” that would lead to a full hostage release and greater Israeli withdrawal, they said.
