New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday granted interim bail to rights activist Teesta Setalvad in connection with the FIR for allegedly fabricating evidence in the 2002 Gujarat riots cases.
Setalvad was arrested on June 25 by Gujarat state police’s anti-terrorism wing.
Granting bail to her, a top court bench of CJI Uday Umesh Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia said the police had already got enough time to interrogate her.
The Gujarat high court has been asked to decide the final bail plea, but Setalvad will be released in the meantime, the Supreme Court said, adding that she be released by Saturday without insisting on local surety.
On Thursday the Supreme Court pulled up Gujarat High Court for listing the bail plea of activist Teesta Setalvad for hearing on September 19, six weeks after it sent a notice to the state government seeking a response to her application.
Her petition for regular bail and quashing of the FIR will continue to be in the High Court.
“The HC ought to have considered the plea for interim bail during the pendency of the matter,” said the Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice UU Lalit, in its observations today.
The case against her is also connected to some Supreme Court observations, of June 24.
She was arrested just two days after the court junked a plea by her and Zakia Jafri — whose husband Ehsan Jafri, a former MP, was killed in the riots — in which they’d challenged a probe that cleared PM Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister, of any wrongdoing.