Supreme Court Declines to Stay Bombay HC Order Acquitting GN Saibaba in ‘Maoist links’ Case
12 March 2024 | The Indian Express
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to stay the Bombay High Court judgment acquitting former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case over alleged Maoist links.
Observing, prima facie, that the high court’s March 5 judgment is “very well-reasoned”, a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta said, “The law is that there is a presumption of innocence. Once there is an order of acquittal, that presumption gets fortified.”
The Nagpur bench of the high court had acquitted Saibaba and five other co-accused who were convicted by the trial court in 2017, noting that the prosecution failed to prove its case. It also ruled that the sanction under UAPA was null and void, and that the entire prosecution case had been vitiated on account of the invalid sanction to prosecute the accused….