Holding that the accused deserved bail on parity, the Bombay High Court has granted bail to Vaibhav Raut, an accused in the 2018 Nalasopara arms haul and terror plot case, and ordered his release on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and a surety for an equal amount.
Quashing and setting aside a December 2022 trial court order that had rejected Raut’s plea seeking bail, a HC division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri Godse noted that the accused has been in custody for the last five years and he deserved bail on parity.
The HC bench granted bail to Raut (44) on the ground that the Supreme Court had granted bail to co-accused Avinash Pawar in August 2022 citing long incarceration and no likelihood of early conclusion of trial, while the high court had granted bail to co-accused Pratap Hajra and Liladhar Lodhi in March 2023 on similar grounds. The HC bench noted that Raut deserved bail on parity.
The HC bench relied on a March 23 order granting bail to the co-accused, in which the high court had noted that Sanatan Sanstha was not declared to be banned or terrorist or frontal organisation by the Centre as per UAPA.
Vaibhav Raut (44), a member of the Hindu Govansh Raksha Samiti and Sanatan Sanstha was arrested in the 2018 Nalasopara arms haul and terror plot case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
In its order granting bail to Raut, the HC bench also noted that the Prosecution intended to examine about 417 witnesses and only four have been examined to date.
It may be recalled that the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had in 2018 booked 12 people under provisions of UAPA, Explosive Substances Act, Explosives Act, Arms Act and Maharashtra Police Act, as well as offences of criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence and harbouring an offender under the Indian Penal Code for their alleged involvement in the alleged Nalasopara arms haul and terror plot case.
Arguing for Raut, Advocates Sana Raees Khan and Aniket Pardeshi had told the high court that the accused was in custody for more than five years and there was no prospect of the trial against him concluding in the near future.
Khan argued that the contents in the alleged diary recovered from a garage having the appellant’s handwriting could not be corroborated by any witness. However, the ATS denied the claim.
The HC bench accepted Khan’s submission that the house from where eight crude bombs were recovered was not in his name but in his father’s name and that the godown from which 12 crude bombs were recovered was in the name of Om Sai Developers and there was no document to show the godown was purchased by Raut. Among other things, the Prosecution had claimed that Raut and other co-accused were active members of Hindu outfit Sanatan Sanstha, whose alleged objective was to form a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ by secretly forming a terrorist gang within Maharashtra and adjoining states.
The ATS alleged that Raut and other accused, who were part of the conspiracy, had conducted a reconnaissance of the places where the bombs were to be planted and one of their aims was to prevent the screening of movies, holding of western cultural programmes and organisation of events such as the ‘Sunburn’ music festival in Pune.
The Maharashtra had ATS had in its charge-sheet filed before an NIA court on December 5, 2018, said that from a bungalow and other premises at Nalasopara, it had 20 live country bombs, 2 gelative sticks, 4 electric and 22 non-electric detonators, 2 complete and one incomplete PCB circuits, 6 battery connectors and 6 transistors, 4 relay switches, 2 gelatine sticks, safety fuse wires, a multimeter, soldering machine and soldering equipment, 2 one litre bottles on which word “poison’ was written and different varieties of explosive substances.