New Delhi: Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan, who was jailed on the way to Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras was on Monday granted five days’ conditional bail by Supreme Court to meet his ailing mother. The UP Police had on October 5 last year arrested Kappan on his way to Hathras where a 20-year-old Dalit woman had died after being brutally gangraped by four upper-caste men.
The Supreme Court has asked Kappan to not give any interviews to any media platform, including social media, for the duration of his bail.
The top court had earlier sought response of the Uttar Pradesh government on a plea challenging the arrest. The bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian aslo questioned the counsel for the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) as to why it did not approach the Allahabad High Court first.