Teesta leaves Sabarmati jail after Supreme Court grants her bail
Social activist Teesta Setalvad released from Sabarmati jail on Saturday, a day after the Supreme Court granted her interim bail in a case of allegedly manipulating evidence linked to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
- Teesta Setalvad, rights activist released
from Sabarmati jail on Saturday.
- The Supreme Court granted her interim bail.
- She is accused of allegedly manipulating
evidence linked to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
- She had spent 70 days in jail.
Teesta Setalvad, a social activist convicted of forging evidence in connection with an alleged conspiracy behind the 2002 post-Godhra riots, left the Sabarmati central jail on Saturday evening after the Supreme Court granted her interim bail (temporary release). She had spent 70 days in jail.
Since her arrest on June 26, she had been housed at this location’s Sabarmati Central Jail. She appeared before Sessions Judge V A Rana as per the SC’s instruction to complete the necessary bail procedures. “In addition to the requirements set by the top court, the sessions court added two more. The offender was ordered by the sessions court to post a personal bond in the amount of Rs. 25,000 and not leave India without its prior approval “Amit Patel, a special public prosecutor, said
On July 5, Setalvad and Sreekumar petitioned the Ahmedabad Sessions Court for bail, which was later denied on July 30. Setalvad filed a petition with the Gujarat High Court (HC) on August 1 asking for bail. On August 3, the Gujarat High Court had granted the release request while setting the next hearing date for September 19. As a result, Setalvad filed to the Supreme Court to get relief.
According to a lawyer involved in the case, Setalvad was presented at roughly 5 pm despite a SC judgement requiring that he appear before the relevant Ahmedabad court by 3 pm on September 3 for the release order.
The activist Teesta Setalvad was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court (SC) on September 2, and she was released from Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad on Saturday at around 8 p.m.
After being detained for almost two months and ten days, she was finally released.
On the basis of an FIR filed by the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), Setalvad was detained by the Gujarat police on June 25. He was accused of plotting to falsely accuse innocent people in relation to the riots that occurred in Gujarat in 2002.
After spending seven days in police remand, she was sent to court custody on July 2.
Her arrest and that of her co-defendant, former IPS RB Sreekumar, occurred just one day after the Supreme Court on June 24 rejected a petition by Zakia Jafri, the widow of assassinated Congress MP Ahsan Jafri, challenging the Special Investigation Team’s “clean bill of health” for the then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others regarding allegations of conspiracy in the riots.
“All those concerned in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceed in accordance with law,” the SC stated in its verdict after noting that proceedings were pursued to “keep the kettle boiling, obviously, for ulterior design.”
Who is Teesta Setalvad ?
Teesta Setalvad is a Mumbai-based journalist and human rights activist who gained notoriety for fighting on behalf of the victims of the Gujrat riots in 2002. She holds the position of secretary for Citizens for Justice and Peace, an NGO formed to aid the victims of the riots in 2002. In 2007, she received the Padma Shri honour.
Early Career and Journalism
Setalvad attended Bombay University to complete her undergraduate studies in philosophy before beginning her career as a journalist. She later worked as a journalist for the publications Business India and The Indian Express. Her career as a journalist, however, was brief, later on, she and her husband Javed Anand started a magazine called Communalism Combat in 1993.
