Teesta Setalvad moves to Supreme Court after Gujarat HC rejects bail plea

Special bench of the Supreme Court to hear the case shortly. Gujarat High Court directed her to surrender immediately.

The Gujarat High Court Saturday rejected the regular bail plea of social activist Teesta Setalvad and directed her to surrender immediately, observing she made attempts to unsettle a democratically elected government and sully the image of the then chief minister and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and tried to send him to jail.

Rejecting Setalvad’s plea in a case of fabricating evidence to implicate innocent people in the 2002 post-Godhra riots cases, the court of Justice Nirzar Desai said that enlarging her will send a false signal that everything in a democratic country is lenient.

The court directed Setalvad, who is currently out on interim bail, to surrender immediately. It also rejected her lawyer’s request to give her 30 days to surrender.

Setalvad was arrested in June last year along with former Gujarat Director General of Police R B Sreekumar and ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in an offence registered by Ahmedabad crime branch police for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame “innocent people” in the post-Godhra riots cases. She was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court on September 2, 2022.

In its judgment, the high court observed that prima facie it appears that Setalvad used her close associates and riot victims to file “false and fabricated affidavits before the Supreme Court with a view to unseat the establishment and to tarnish the image of establishment and the then chief minister (Modi)”.

If today some political party allegedly gave her the task to unsettle the (then) government, tomorrow “some outside force may utilise and convince a person to make efforts in a similar line causing danger to the nation or to a particular state by adopting the same modalities”, it said.

Enlarging her on bail will send a false signal that everything in a democratic country is so lenient that “even if a person goes to the extent of making efforts to unseat the then establishment and disrepute the image of the then chief minister to see that he is sent to jail”, the person can be released on bail, the court said.

This will “encourage others also to act in a similar manner”, it said.

Prima facie it appears that Setalvad, a Padma Shri and former member of the Planning Commission, “made attempts to create an atmosphere to unsettle democratically elected government to disrepute the image of the then chief minister and to see that he goes to jail”, it said.

Updated: 01 Jul 2023, 06:54 PM IST