The advocate appearing for trade unionist and human rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, while arguing for her bail, told the Bombay High Court on Wednesday that Pune Police has found no material against her to keep her at Yerwada jail for a year in the Elgaar Parishad case.
Advocate Yug Chaudhary appearing for Ms. Bhardwaj told a single bench of Justice S.V. Kotwal that another accused and advocate Surendra Gadling, also at Yerwada jail, uses the platform of Indian Association of People’s Lawyers to purport Maoists ideas and pointed out the organisation is not banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Mr. Gadling is the secretary of IAPL, whereas Ms. Bharadwaj is the vice-president and retired Justice Suresh Hosbet of HC is the president.
Mr. Chaudhry said the chargesheet consists of documents mostly letters which were not found from Ms. Bharadwaj’s house and the other material relied by the Pune police is in the form of printouts, but not printouts of originals.
He said the documents are typed, unsigned, unverified and unauthenticated. As there is nothing to prove the authorship, none are inadmissible in law.
He added the letters are written by A to B saying something about Ms. Bharadwaj and questioned how it can be proved that the letter was received by Ms. Bharadwaj.
Mr. Chaudhry read the contents of the letter, “on January 2, 2018, there was a mohalla meeting of special female naxal members and people attending the meeting were, Shoma Sen and Sudha Bharadwaj.” Mr. Chaudhry said, “Shoma Sen is a retired professor of literature of the Nagpur University and Ms. Bharadwaj is a Professor at National Law University, Delhi. However, as per the call data records, Prof. Sen was at Mumbai and Ms. Bharadwaj in Faridabad.”
The hearing will continue on September 6.
