On parity with comic Munawar, 2 others granted bail by Madhya Pradesh HC

Comedian Nalin Yadav and civil engineer Sadakat Khan were granted ad-interim bail by the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday. With this, all those arrested in connection with the case of hurting religious sentiments on January 1 are out on ad-interim bail.

A single bench of Justice Rohit Arya, accepting the appeal for parity with the Supreme Court order granting comedian Munawar Faruqui ad-interim bail on February 5, granted temporary relief to Sadakat and Nalin.

The relief for the duo comes nearly two months after their arrest on January 1 based on a complaint by Ekalavya Singh Gaur, son of BJP MLA Malini Singh Gaur. Nalin along with Munawar Faruqui, Edwin Anthony, Prakhar Vyas, Priyam Vyas were arrested on January 1 while Sadakat was arrested on January 2 from outside the court premises where he had come to meet Faruqui.

All six were charged with hurting religious sentiments. While Munawar was the first to get ad-interim bail from the Supreme Court, Prakhar Vyas and Edwin Anthony were granted relief by the High Court on February 12 after they pleaded for parity with the Supreme Court’s order. But Sadakat Khan’s bail plea citing parity was rejected on February 9. Subsequently, he had approached the High Court with Nalin Yadav. Priyam Vyas who was later learnt to be a minor, was granted relief a week after his arrest by the Juvenile Court.

According to Yadav’s counsel, Anshuman Shrivastava, the HC questioned why his client did not approach the Supreme Court for bail. “We informed the honorable court that while we were planning to approach the Supreme Court, the High Court had in the meanwhile granted bail to other co-accused in parity with the Supreme Court order. We applied for relief before the High Court itself,” Shrivastava told The Indian Express.

Sadakat’s advocate, Ashar Warsi said, “We pleaded for parity before the honorable court which accepted our plea and granted us relief in the matter.”