SC grants bail to Binayak aide

The Supreme Court granted bail to alleged Maoist sympathiser Piyush Guha,observing that mere posession of certain materail cannot be a ground for convicting a person.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted bail to alleged Maoist sympathiser Piyush Guha,observing that mere posession of certain materail cannot be a ground for convicting a person.

Guha,a Kolkata-based trader,was convicted along with Binayak Sen and Narayan Sanyal on charges of conspiring to commit sedition and providing assistance to suspected Naxalites. The High Court had rejected his bail petition during the pendency of the hearing of his appeal against the trial court verdict.

The bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and C K Prasad wondered how mere possession of certain material could be a ground for convicting a person. Apart from certain documents,are there any other material? Possession of papers is not an offence. We cant go on the basis of mere surmises and conjectures,it observed.

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The apex court made the remarks after senior counsel U U Lalit,appearing for the Chhattisgarh government,opposed the bail on the grounds that Guha was an active sympathiser of Maoists and there were a large number of material and pamphlets to link him to the banned organisation.

To this,the court remarked,A large number of material and news come to us. Similarly,such material come to you and this person also. If that is his ideology and he says revolution is the only way to reform society,can we say that is an offence?

Lalit said the state had material to show that Guha,besides being a Maoist sympathiser,had eulogised the killing of policemen by Naxalites and was also an accused in the Purulia arms drop case in West Bengal.