Former Delhi College professor GN Saibaba was launched from Nagpur Central Jail on Thursday, two days after the Bombay Excessive Court docket acquitted him and 5 others in a case about them allegedly having hyperlinks with Maoists, ANI reported.
Saibaba was first arrested within the case in Could 2014 however was granted bail twice. He had been lodged within the Nagpur Central Jail since a classes court docket convicted him on March 7, 2017.
On Tuesday, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay Excessive Court docket acquitted Saibaba, Hem Mishra, Mahesh Tirkey, Vijay Tirkey, Narayan Sanglikar, Prashant Rahi and Pandu Narote. Narote died in jail on August 26, 2022, attributable to swine flu.
In its judgement, the Excessive Court docket stated that accessing content material about Communist or Naxalite philosophy, together with movies of a violent nature, was not inherently unlawful until there’s proof linking the accused to particular acts of violence or terrorism.
“No proof has been led by the prosecution by any witness to any incident, assault, act of violence and even proof collected from some earlier scene of offence the place a terrorist act has taken place, as a way to join the accused to such act, both by collaborating in its preparation or its course or in any method offering help to its fee,” stated the court docket.
The Excessive Court docket put aside the judgement of a classes court docket that had convicted the accused individuals in 2017.
Hours later, the court docket dismissed the Maharashtra authorities’s software searching for a six-week keep on the acquittal of Saibaba and the 5 others. The state authorities has approached the Supreme Court docket, difficult the acquittal.
Wheelchair-bound Saibaba, who’s 90% disabled, was convicted by the trial court docket in 2017 for allegedly having hyperlinks to the banned Communist Social gathering of India (Maoist) and a frontal organisation, the Revolutionary Democratic Entrance. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment.