Activist Saket Gokhale on November 12 filed an RTI with the Supreme Court seeking to know the backlog of interim bail petitions pending before the registry, a day after Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami was granted bail by the apex court within two days of his plea that was earlier rejected by the Bombay High Court .
Mr. Goswami was denied bail by the High Court on November 9 in a case of abetment to suicide of architect-interior designer Anvay Naik in 2018. Naik’s family had levelled allegations of non-payment of dues and issuing life threats on three accused, including Mr. Goswami, in the case.
The TV anchor had challenged it before the Supreme Court which had given him bail on November 11.
Mr. Gokhale filed the RTI seeking to know pending interim bail applications before the Supreme Court and the average waiting period between filing of interim bail applications with the registry and their listing before an appropriate bench.
There are lot of Kashmir-related habeus corpus hearings or cases of political prisoners such as those arrested in Bheema Koregaon or Delhi riots cases where “personal liberty” has been trampled upon, he alleged.
When such matters were mentioned before the Supreme Court, the petitioners were told to go to High Courts first, he claimed.
“In this overall thing, the reason to file RTI is to find out how many such interim bail applications are pending with the registry of the Supreme Court. What we are seeing is there are certain matters which tend to get urgent hearing even if it is a defective matter whereas there are certain matters which are pending for a long time but never get listed,” Mr. Gokhale told PTI.
He said it is a known fact that judicial process is slow and there is a backlog but certain individuals are jumping the queue and getting urgent listing.
It is very important to know what is the actual backlog of cases and the average time when a case like this is listed before a bench.
