ON THURSDAY, the Bombay High Court granted regular bail to former Delhi University professor Hany Babu in connection with the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case.
A Division Bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale ordered Babu’s release on the ground of prolonged pre-trial incarceration.
Babu was arrested on April 14, 2020 and has been in jail ever since. He has spent more than five years behind bars as an undertrial prisoner.
The Bench directed Babu to report to the office of the National Investigating Agency (‘NIA’) in Mumbai on the first Monday of every calendar month between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and mark his attendance until the conclusion of the trial.
He was also directed not to leave the territorial jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court without prior permission from the Special Judge, NIA, City Civil and Sessions Court, Greater Mumbai.
“It is by now a well-settled and recognised principle of law that prolonged incarceration without trial amounts to an infringement of the right of an accused enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The prolonged incarceration and the unlikelihood of the trial being completed within a reasonable time or in the near future necessitate the consequential release of the undertrial on bail,” the Bench held.
