Bhima Koregaon accused Varavara Rao discharged from hospital, walks out after Bombay HC's bail last month
Varavara Rao had been granted bail for six months by the Bombay High Court on February 22 on medical grounds last month.
FollowNew Delhi: Poet-activist Varavara Rao, who has been in jail for over two years in the Bhima-Koregaon case, walked out of Mumbai’s Nanavati Hospital late on Saturday after being granted bail for six months by the Bombay High Court on medical grounds.
He was undergoing treatment at the hospital where was admitted by the Maharashtra government following the high court's intervention. His lawyer Indira Jaisingh posted a photo of the poet-activist on Twitter.
Rao has been asked by the court to remain in Mumbai and be available for investigation whenever needed. He will also have to submit his passport before the NIA (National Investigation Agency) court, and he has been forbidden to establish any contact with his co-accused in the case. He has to submit a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and two sureties of the same amount.
He was arrested in 2018 and has been in jail since. He contracted Covid-19 in July 2020 and has been in and out of hospital because of his health.
The case pertains to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which, the police claimed, triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial located on the outskirts of the western Maharashtra city.
Last month, Indira Jaising highlighted his poor health condition before the Bombay High Court, saying that of the 365 days since last February, he spent 149 days in hospital. She urged the court to let Rao out of Maharashtra's Taloja prison where he is lodged as an undertrial and to permit him to go home and stay with his family in Hyderabad.
