G N Saibaba was accused of Maoist links under sections of the UAPA. (File) A day after the Bombay High Court acquitted her father, along with former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba and four others, Shikha Rahi, the daughter of journalist Prashant Rahi, said that she was disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision on Saturday to suspend the judgment.
“This was the first case where the state made allegations about urban naxals. The conviction in 2017 was a matter of great pride for the state and we knew that an appeal would be filed if we got a fair judgment from the high court. We did not expect the judiciary to get coloured by the picture painted by the prosecution about my father and others,” Shikha said.
The Supreme Court on Saturday suspended the impugned judgment of the Bombay High Court and mentioned during the hearing that it had found fault with the high court for not entering into the merits of the case and finding a shortcut to decide.
Shikha said that it was not expected that the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court would not go into the merits of the case in the judgment passed on Friday. “The high court had heard both the sides on merits of the case for 10 days. We had submitted discrepancies in the evidence including the irregularities in the seizure of electronic evidence. The court had seemed to be questioning the prosecution about it but it discarded all the arguments, only relying on the sanction instead,” she said.