Eight accused in the Bhima Koregaon caste violence case moved the Bombay High Court on Tuesday seeking bail on the ground that the special judge at Pune who rejected their default bail was not authorised to do so. Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira filed the petition through advocate R. Sathyanarayanan.
They are challenging the order passed by special judge K.D. Wadane on September 5, 2019 rejecting their default bail pleas. They said the special judge had no jurisdiction to take cognizance as original jurisdiction as the case was not committed by the magistrate.
The petitioners urged the High Court to set aside the order passed on September 5, 2019 and declare that the special judge had no power to take cognizance and his action is bad in law and illegal.
The petition stated, “The order suffers from serious illegality. Neither the court of district judge nor the additional sessions judge nor any presiding officers have been authorised and thus the special judge is precluded from conducting the matter and cannot assume powers under the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act.”
The matter will be heard on July 8 by a division bench of Justices S.S. Shinde and N.J. Jamadar.
