New Delhi: Barely hours after the Delhi High Court on Thursday said its orders granting bail to Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha must be implemented and that the process of release on bail cannot be "open-ended", a local court in Karkardooma here ordered the immediate release of the three student activists, charged under UAPA in a Delhi riots case — over 30 hours after the Delhi High Court had granted bail to them.
Significantly, the same trial court of Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Bedi had a day ago deferred the order on Devangana and Natasha's release from jail, after citing that she had a "busy board" of bail pleas listed before her and that the police needed time to verify their addresses.
The police had sought up to six days' time to verify the addresses and sureties of all three.
Following this, Devangana, Natasha and Asif moved the Delhi High Court on Thursday morning against ASJ Bedi's order deferring their release. While the Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J Bhambhani (the same bench that granted bail) were not inclined to interfere, multiple times during the hearing, it said its directions must be implemented without delay.
The high court asked that the trial court pronounce its orders at the earliest, minutes after which ASJ Bedi ordered the release of the three calling the Delhi Police's reasons for seeking more time to verify addresses "not a plausible reason to be kept imprisoned".
In her order, ASJ Bedi observed: "At least verification process qua sureties should have been filed by 1 pm yesterday (Wednesday) all sureties are residents of Delhi. Apropos the reason forwarded by IO that verification qua accused's permanent address would need time".
The court added that this by itself "cannot be a plausible reason for the accused to be kept imprisoned till the time such reports are filed".
Hence, the court noted that considering the same, "it would be expedient in the ends of justice and appropriate" that the accused be released forthwith as per orders of Delhi High Court.
Further, the order stated that since the verification of the permanent address of the accused shall require some time, the report for the same should be filed by the Investigating Officer (IO) on or before June 23 at 2:30 pm before the court, while the addresses of the accused at Delhi should be verified and the report for the same be filed by 5 pm on Thursday.
Significantly, as the high court heard the student activists' pleas on Thursday, Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal, for Tanha, notably pointed out that the Delhi Police had somehow managed to verify the address while filing multiple chargesheet but were finding it difficult to do so now.
Meanwhile, the prosecution insisted that there were "glaring discrepancies" in the addresses of the accused and hence it would take time to verify them. The Delhi Police's appeal of the Delhi High Court order granting bail to these three activists is now set to be heard by the Supreme Court today (Friday).