The Supreme Court on Monday did not grant any interim relief to suspended Delhi University professor and paraplegic, G.N. Saibaba, lodged as an undertrial in Nagpur jail for alleged Naxal links.
A Bench of Justices J.S. Khehar and C. Nagappan said it would consider the case of releasing Saibaba on bail on April 4, 2016, after the State of Maharashtra completed the examination of eight material witnesses in the trial.
The Bench has for the time being agreed with the State's plea not to release the wheel-chair bound Saibaba till the trial court completes recording the testimony of these witnesses, considered crucial to the case, in the next two to three weeks.
The apex court ordered that the trial should continue on a day-to-day basis from March 4 and asked the State to provide it with a list containing the names of these eight witnesses.
The Bench was hearing a plea by Saibaba seeking bail on the ground that he is lodged in the notorious anda isolation cell and is in a "precarious state of health and is now only able to crawl."
In the previous hearing, the Bench had questioned the need to keep him in solitary confinement.
Last time, the Bench had even considered placing Saibaba in house custody, where he could neither go out nor have visitors. But the State had persisted that the trial would be over in two months and read out a medical report from the jail denying that Saibaba was in solitary confinement.
Meanwhile, the Bench posted a petition filed by author Arundhati Roy, against whom contempt proceedings was initiated for publishing an article on Saibaba on July 12, 2016.
