On Saturday, the court of Special Judge KD Vadane held the arrest of academician, writer and civil right activist Anand Teltumbde as illegal.
Teltumbde was arrested by the sleuths of the Pune police during the wee hours of Saturday morning at Mumbai domestic airport. He was produced in the Pune court at 3 pm. Teltumbde’s bail application had been rejected on Friday; however, he was under four weeks interim protection by the Supreme Court to approach a competent authority.
The initial hearing started with the filing of an application of contempt of court by defence lawyer Rohan Nahar on behalf of Teltumbde. The defence argued that the entire action of the Pune police in arresting Teltumbde was “illegal and contemptuous”. Nahar argued that though Teltumbde had been granted interim protection by the apex court for the period starting from January 14 to February 11, he had been arrested by the police.
In the application, the defence said: “A plain reading of the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court will denote that the protection offered to the said Accused, is in force till 11/02/2019. It will be elementary to say the least that rejection of relief under sec.438 of Cr.P.C by this Hon’ble Court would not vitiate/set aside the relief granted by Hon’ble Supreme Court.” It added that the state of Maharashtra had “wilfully disobeyed” the Supreme Court’s order by arresting Teltumbade.
Rohan Nahar, during the argument, said: “The prosecution is interpreting the Supreme Court’s order for their own benefits. When the apex court has given him four weeks time period to approach the competent authority—which can be the high court as well as Supreme Court—the police cannot arrest him just as his bail application has been rejected by the session court.”
Nahar said if the judge rejected this application of contempt of court being filed, the defence would make the judge “a party to contempt of court and will approach the higher court”.
The prosecution responded that the Supreme Court had granted four weeks time to file a bail application or an application for anticipatory bail. It said the protection was not to operate after the dismissal of the application before the trial court, adding that the Supreme Court had not anticipated the dismissal of the application. Arguing for the prosecution, Ujjawala Pawar said: “The order passed by the Supreme court was to move before the competent authority and when the accused submitted himself in front of this court his interim protection was extinguished. The Supreme Court order was not in the anticipation of the order passed by this court. The court can stay or quash only those orders which are impugned in the list before it. The court cannot stay or quash orders in the anticipation before they pass.”
Pawar further argued that Teltumbde’s arrest was not illegal. She said: “The state of Maharashtra and the investigating officer have not committed contempt of court and they are not emtitled for the action under the Contempt Of Court Act.”
After hearing both sides, Special Judge Vadane took a break of about half an hour before passing the order declaring that the arrest of Anand Teltumbde was illegal. He said: “…considering all facts and circumstances (mentioned in the order) I have come to the conclusion that the arrest of accused Anand Teltumbde made by the investigating officer is against impugned order by Honourable Apex court in the special leave petition. Therefore, impugned arrest of accused Anand Teltumbde by investigating officers is [an] illegal one and also amounts to contempt of the order of Honourable Apex court.” He, therefore, passed an order that Teltumbde be released forthwith and that the Supreme Court be accordingly informed.
Talking to reporters after the court proceedings, Teltumbde said: “All the arguments made by the police are fake but the judges buy that. The evidences given by the police are totally fabricated. They have made a story out of it.”
Read the application for contempt of court here:
Read the response to Teltumbde’s application here:
