Swear allegiance to Constitution, avail bail, HC tells accused in Maoist case

The Madras high court has told an accused in a case pursued by the National Investigation Agency to avail bail after giving an oath to the effect that he would abide by the Constitution of India.

A division bench of Justices P N Prakash and A A Nakkiran stipulated the condition while granting bail to Suresh Rajan, the second accused in the NIA case relating to Maoists.

"Suresh Rajan shall file a sworn affidavit in Tamil affixing his signature and thumb impression before the special court stating that he owes faith and allegiance to the Constitution and that he does not believe in the Maoist ideology... he also shall state that he does not believe in violence as an ideology and that he would do nothing to subvert the Constitution," the judges said in their recent order.

The bench also imposed other usual conditions and stated that the special court is entitled to cancel the bail if he violated any of them.

The bench was passing interim orders on a criminal appeal preferred by Rajan to set aside an order dated January 10 this year of the special court constituted under the National Investigation Agency Act, 2008 (Sessions Court for Exclusive Trial of Bomb Blast Cases), in Poonamallee, Chennai.

According to the prosecution, one Vivek @ Vivekanandan had a Facebook account entitled ’Thozhar Vivek’. He posted a message in Tamil in his account on August 15, 2020, stating that "The change of regime that happened in 1947 is a  sham  because it has not got rid of feudalism, imperialism and exploitation of the poor and therefore, August 15th is a farce Independence. In order to gain real independence, let us mobilise in the path of war shown by Naxalbari.’

Noticing this post, a case was registered by the Tallakulam police (in Madurai) in September 2020 for the offences under various sections of the IPC and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act  and Vivek was arrested in December that year. Based on the orders dated March 12, 2021, of the central government, the case was transferred to the NIA.

The NIA took up the investigation of the case and arrested Suresh Rajan (A-2) on June 8, 2021, and remanded him in judicial  custody. Meanwhile, bail was granted to Vivek by the special court in May 2021 on the ground that the chargesheet was not filed within the stipulated time of 90 days from the date of his arrest. The appeal preferred by the NIA against it was dismissed by the High court later.

The NIA completed the investigation and filed a final report on June 11, 2021, in the special court for the offences against Vivek and Suresh Rajan and an advocate by name Mohan (A-3). While so, Suresh Rajan preferred a bail application which has been dismissed by the special court on January 10 this year. Hence, the present appeal before the high court.