The Supreme Court on Thursday, October 28 granted bail to Thaha Fasal in the controversial Pantheerankavu Unlawful Atrocities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case. The SC also dismissed the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) plea to cancel the bail given to another accused in the case, Allan Shuhaib. Both the students were arrested in November 2019 by the Kerala police for alleged links with Maoists. In September 2020, an NIA court had granted bail to both. But in January 2021, the Kerala High Court cancelled the bail given to Thaha and asked him to surrender while Allan was allowed to be on bail for health reasons.
The Kerala police had alleged that Maoist literature was found with the students when arresting them. The case was later taken up by the NIA. After being jailed for close to a year, last September the NIA court in Kochi granted the students bail, stating that there is no proof that the youth were Maoists. The court in fact said that the materials on record prima facie prove that both the young men had rendered support to the banned CPI (Maoist) organisation, but there were no links to show that they were being controlled by the organisation. The court noted that though both Allan and Thaha were booked for the offence under Section 20 of the UAPA for being a member of a terrorist organisation, this section was dropped from the chargesheet.
According to Livelaw, senior advocate Jayant Muth Raj who appeared for Thaha argued that the NIA did not have material to establish any links with Maoists. He pointed out that Section 20 had been dropped from the chargesheet post investigation.
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