UAPA Case : NIA Challenges Bail Granted To Allan Shuhaib; Supreme Court Tags It With Thwaha Fasal's Bail Plea

The National Investigation Agency informed the Supreme Court on Friday that it has filed a special leave petition challenging the Kerala High Court judgment which did not interfere with the bail granted to law student Allan Shuhaib in the UAPA case registered over alleged Maoist links.The central agency made this submission while the Supreme Court was hearing the petition filed by Allan's co-accused Thwaha Fasal, a journalism student, challenging the very same judgment of the Kerala High Court which set aside the bail granted to him by the Special NIA Court.Additional Solicitor General SV Raju told the bench that the SLP was filed yesterday evening.Based on the NIA's submission, a division bench comprising Justices Navin Sinha and R Subhash Reddy tagged both the matters together and posted them to August 24.Though Senior Advocate R Basant, appearing for Thwaha Fasal, made a request for interim relief, the bench said that it cannot be considered at the moment."Not at this moment. There is one petition challenging the bail and another petition seeking bail. Both should be considered together", Justice Sinha said.The petitions are filed against the judgment passed by the Kerala High Court on January 4 this year which overturned the findings of the Special NIA Court that no prima facie case is made out against the accused from the chargesheet. However, the High Court did not upset the bail granted to Allan Shuhaib considering his young age and also his psychiatric issues related to depression.The Special Court, in its order delivered in September last year, had observed that no prima facie case was made out against the accused so as to attract Section 43D(5) of the Unwalful Activities Prevention Act. The Special Court observed that the case materials, at the most, suggested that the accused had Maoist leanings but had not indulged in any overt violence or incitement to violence.The High Court observed that the trial court went into a "thread-bare analysis" of the documents on record as if in a trial' and observed that the documents seized from the accused were "highly inflammable and volatile".In April, the Supreme Court had issued notice in Fasal's petition orally observing that the "trial court has also passed an equally well reasoned order". The case was first registered by the Kerala Police in November 2019. Later, the NIA took over the case. Last week, Senior Advocate V Giri, who had appeared for Fasal, had told the Supreme Court that he was a young student with no criminal antecedents. The senior counsel also submitted that he was hailing from a poor background and has undergone over 500 days of custody.

UAPA Case : NIA Challenges Bail Granted To Allan Shuhaib; Supreme Court Tags It With Thwaha Fasal's Bail Plea

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