New Delhi: Putting on hold the Bombay High Court order, the Supreme Court on Saturday in a special hearing stayed the release of ex-DU professor GN Saibaba, and others from jail and issued notice to all the six accused.

The apex court listed the State’s appeal for final disposal on December 8

A Bench of Justices MR Shah and Bela Trivedi remarked that generally “as far as terrorist activities are concerned, the brain plays a very important role… A brain for such activities is very dangerous”.

The oral comment was made when Saibaba’s lawyer, senior advocate R Basant, referred to the State’s allegation that his client was the “brain” behind the alleged Maoist activities and his fellow accused were mere “foot soldiers”. Mr Basant said Saibaba was 90% physically disabled and had led a respectable life as a professor in the Delhi University.

A request to transfer Saibaba to house arrest in order to “preserve his health” failed for now. He will continue to remain in Nagpur Central Jail.

“These requests are coming very frequently from naxals, especially urban naxals… ‘allow me house arrest’… In UAPA offences, accused have to be kept confined. You don’t need to go somewhere to stab someone, you don’t need to go somewhere to shoot someone. House arrest is never an option,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for Maharashtra, intervened.

Mr Basant suggested the State could post guards outside his house, cut the telephone lines.

“My Lords, I am making a humanitarian request on medical grounds. I am willing to abide by any condition… He does not have any criminal antecedents, not even a prosecution. Besides being 90% disabled, he has multiple other ailments,” he pleaded to the court.

“Isolation in prison is the only condition for UAPA offenders,” Mr. Mehta said flatly. He noted that the Bombay High Court had rejected bail to Saibaba on medical grounds in 2020.

Saibaba has been in custody for over seven years since his arrest in May 2014. A trial court had found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2017.

On Friday, the High Court set aside the lower court judgment and ordered the release of Saibaba and other accused persons. The High Court had found that sanction for Saibaba’s prosecution was non-existent at the time the court took cognisance of the case and even while charges were framed against him. In the case of the others, the High Court had concluded that their sanction was invalid for “non-application of mind” by the competent authority.

But the relief from the High Court proved short-lived for the disabled man. Maharashtra had rushed to the Supreme Court within hours of the High Court order on Friday. Even the case records in Marathi were translated to English overnight.

On Saturday, the Bench found, after giving “anxious thoughts” about the facts and circumstances, that the case was a “fit” one to suspend the High Court’s order of discharge.

Mehta argued that the offences against Saibaba and others ordered to be released were serious and grave. They affected the sovereignty and integrity of India. They wanted to “overthrow the parliamentary form of democracy and had held meetings with naxal commanders”. He invoked Section 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to argue that an appellate court cannot reverse the trial court’s judgment merely on the basis of an irregularity. The trial court had appreciated the evidence against them before convicting them whereas the High Court had not even gone into the merits of the case before discharging them for lack of or invalid sanction, Mehta argued.

The court issued notice to Saibaba and his fellow accused on Maharashtra’s appeal. It did not foreclose Saibaba’s chances of seeking bail under Section 437A of the CrPC.

The apex court listed the State’s appeal for final disposal on December 8.

In March 2017, a sessions court in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district convicted Saibaba and other people, including a journalist and a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student, for alleged Maoist links and for indulging in activities amounting to waging war against the country. The court had held Saibaba and the others guilty under various provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Saibaba, 52, who is wheelchair-bound due to a physical disability, is currently lodged in the Nagpur central prison. He was arrested in February 2014.