A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court has refused bail to 83-year-old activist Stan Lourduswamy, popularly know as Stan Swamy, for his involvement in the Elgar Parishad-Maoists links case.
The court reached this decision based on the material on record that Stan Swamy had schemed a “serious conspiracy” with members of a banned Maoist organisation in order to create unrest in the country and to overthrow the government.
Special judge DE Kothalikar, who rejected Stan Swamy’s bail plea, observed that there is enough evidence to suggest Swamy was a member of a banned Maoist organisation.
The material that the court referred to included around “140 e-mails between the applicant (Stan Swamy) and his co-accused,” the fact that Stan Swamy and others he communicated with were referred to as “comrades”, and that Stan Swamy had received eight lakh from one “Comrade Mohan”, allegedly for the furtherance of Maoist activities.
“Prima facie it can be gathered that the applicant along with other members of the banned organisation hatched a serious conspiracy to create unrest in the entire country and to overpower the Government, politically and by using muscle power,” the order read.
“The material placed on record thus prima facie denote that the applicant was not only the member of banned organisation CPI (Maoist) but he was carrying out activities further in the objective of the organisation which is nothing but to overthrow the democracy of the nation,” said Justice Kothalikar in the order.
Stan Swamy was born in Trichy in Tamil Nadu. Later in life, he became a Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit order.
Earlier, the Bombay High Court had granted bail on medical grounds to octogenarian Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao in the same case. It was a “genuine and fit” case for granting bail, the Bombay High Court had said, in view of Rao’s advanced age.
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