Supreme Court Grants Teesta Setalvad One Week's Protection, Stays Gujarat HC Order to Surrender [Read Order]

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has on July 1, 2023 granted interim protection to activist Teesta Setalvad for one week, within hours of the Gujarat High Court's order rejecting her plea for regular bail and directing her to surrender immediately in a case related to fabrication of evidences in 2002 riots cases.

In a special sitting on Saturday, a closed day for the top court, a bench of Justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna and Dipankar Datta was set up as two judges bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Prashant Kumar Mishra differed on subject of interim protection to her.

The lightening speed with which the matter was taken up by the Supreme Court has surprised many as Setalvad was arrested earlier in the case after the top court itself made damning observations against her in keeping the pot boiling in 2002 riots cases.

However, she was granted interim bail on September 2, 2022 and continued to enjoy the liberty.

After hearing Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for the Gujarat government and senior advocate C U Singh for Setalvad, the bench said, "Without considering anything on merits of the matter, finding that the Single Judge was not correct in granting even some protection, we grant stay of the impugned order passed by the High Court for a period of one week from today."

The court said the High Court ought to have granted at least some protection to the petitioner to allow her to challenge the order on rejection of bail.

The court also explained in ordinary circumstances, it would not have considered such a request.

"However, it is to be noted that after the FIR was registered against the petitioner on 25.06.2022 and the petitioner was arrested, this court considering the application for grant of interim bail had granted the same on certain conditions, vide order dated 02.09.2022. One of the factors that weighed with this court was that the petitioner was a lady and as such entitled to special protection under Section 437 Cr.P.C," the bench said.

[Read Order]