The Bombay High Court has upheld the decision to frame charges against alleged 73-year-old Naxal operative Satyanarayana Rani in connection with the 2019 Gadchiroli blast case that caused death of 15 police personnel and one civilian.
On July 10, 2024, a Division Bench comprising Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande dismissed the accused’s petition that challenged a special court’s order passed in August 2021 refusing to discharge Rani from the case. A copy of the order was made available on Thursday (August 8).
The High Court order emphasised that the decision made by the special court was based on substantial facts that clearly proved that accused Rani and other co-accused were involved with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the charges are justified. The High Court said there was evidence to prove that Rani and others played a role in a larger conspiracy, attended a meeting where conspiracy was hatched to ambush the security forces and avenge the killing of 40 Naxals.
“The evidence against Rani justified framing of charge. Rani and others are accused of killing police personnel. At this stage, the probative value of the material cannot be gone into and the said material brought on record must be accepted as true. There must exist some material for entertaining a strong suspicion, which can form the basis for the drawing of the charge and refusal to discharge the accused. It is equally well settled that the defence of the accused is not to be looked into at the stage, when the accused seek discharge, which contemplate that the record of the case ‘is to be perused’, which is understood to cover the documents and evidence if any, produced by the prosecution,” the court order read.
HC allows another plea
Dismissing Rani’s discharge plea, the High Court allowed his another petition challenging the special court’s decision to permit the prosecution to submit additional witness statements as evidence without filing a supplementary chargesheet. The Bench said, “The above procedure adopted is completely unknown to law,” and quashed the special court order permitting the prosecution to submit the additional evidence. On July 2022, Rani was granted bail by the High Court.
On May 1, 2019, an improvised explosive device (IED) blast targeted a vehicle carrying members of the Maharashtra police’s Quick Response Team (QRT), killing 15 police personnel.
Rani was arrested in June 2019 from Hyderabad for being an alleged Naxal operative and part of the blast conspiracy. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) was probing the case and he was booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Explosive Substances Act. The NIA opposed Rani’s petition making an argument that there was prima facie evidence in the case that proved his involvement in Naxal activities as well as the blast.
Published - August 08, 2024 11:24 pm IST
