Teesta Setalvad’s bail was denied by the Gujarat High Court, however the SC has overturned that decision
On Saturday, the Supreme Court issued a one-week stay of the Gujarat High Court’s decision denying social activist Teesta Setalvad regular bail. Setalvad is accused of conspiring and fabricating evidence to claim that the State’s top officials did nothing to stop or control the riots that had engulfed the State following the 2002 burning of a Sabarmati Express coach at Godhra Railway Station, which resulted in 59 fatalities.
A three-judge panel made up of Justice BR Gavai, Justice AS Bopanna, and Justice Dipankar Datta questioned the “alarming urgency” with which the Gujarat High Court’s sole judge issued the order this morning, a working Saturday for the Gujarat High Court, and refused to give Teesta Setalvad even a day to appeal the court’s decision to deny her request for regular bail to the Supreme Court.
Teesta Setalvad was granted temporary release by the top court on September 2, 2022, and the top court today expressed its disapproval of the High Court’s decision to refuse her bail and asked her to appear immediately.
Justice Gavai, who was sitting in the chair, questioned the “alarming urgency” of the single judge’s decision to deny Teesta Setalvad a week to file an appeal against the decision to deny her request for regular bail.
The bench asked at the extraordinary hearing that started at 9.15 PM, “Was the single judge justified in not giving Teesta time to appeal the denial of regular bail,” and “In our opinion, the single judge was totally wrong in not giving (her) interim protection.”
The two-judge bench, made up of Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra, disbanded earlier in the evening when they couldn’t agree on whether to award Teesta Setalvad relief.
