SC to hear activist Teesta Setalvad’s plea against Gujarat HC order

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday a plea by social activist Teesta Setalvad challenging the Gujarat High Court order which had rejected her plea for regular bail and directed her to surrender immediately in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence to frame innocent people in 2002 postGodhra riots cases.

In a special late-night hearing on July 1, the apex court had protected Setalvad from arrest and stayed for a week the high court order.

According to the cause list of Wednesday posted on the apex court website, a bench comprising justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna and Dipankar Datta would hear the matter.

During the late-night hearing on Saturday, the threejudge bench had questioned the denial of time to Setalvad to appeal against the high court’s July 1 order, saying even an ordinary criminal is entitled to some form of interim relief. “In ordinary circumstances, we would not have considered such a request.

However, it is to be noted that after the FIR was registered against the petitioner on June 25, 2022 and the petitioner was arrested.

“This court considering the application for grant of interim bail had granted the same on certain conditions, vide order dated September 2, 2022 . One of the factors that weighed with this court was that the petitioner was a lady and as such entitled to special protection under Section 437 CrPC,” the bench had noted in its order.

“We find that, taking into consideration this fact, the single judge ought to have granted at least some protection so that the petitioner has sufficient time to challenge the order passed by the single judge before this court.

“In that view of the matter, without considering anything on merits of the matter, finding that the single judge was not correct in granting even some protection, we grant a stay of the impugned order passed by the high court for a period of one week from today,” it had said. (PTI)