2020 Bengaluru riots: SC rejects bail plea of accused

Their appeal came up before a Bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Vikram Nath, which, however, refused to interfere with the HC order that upheld a special court’s decision rejecting their bail pleas.

Appearing for one of the accused, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra contended that his client was framed and that his name was not in the FIR, but had only been added after the National Investigation Agency took up the probe and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was invoked against the accused.

Advocate Gaurav Agarwal, appearing for five other accused, said the investigation against them had been completed and they were in custody for the past 16 months. Dismissing their appeal against the special court order, the HC had said: “…if the act is “likely to strike terror”, the absence of “ïntent to strike terror” will not by itself make the invocation of” the relevant UAPA provisions “unjustified”.

The HC said the role of accused persons “has been established through prosecution witnesses, statements of protected witnesses documentary/electronic evidence and CDRs of mobile numbers used by the accused. Appellants with a common intention were part of unlawful assembly and with a common object to commit a terrorist act, destruction of public and private properties had disobeyed the promulgation of the orders issued under Section 144 CrPC. In fact, in furtherance of the common objective to cause harm and destruction to the police station, they have attacked the police personnel who were on duty at the relevant date, time and place of incident.”