SC orders expeditious hearing in Anil Deshmukh’s bail plea
A bench of the Supreme Court granted liberty to the petitioner, Anil Deshmukh, to file an application seeking an early hearing in his bail plea pending before the Bombay High Court.
Justice Rajeev Singh of the Lucknow bench of the high court, who had granted bail to Ashish Mishra earlier, recused himself from hearing it again after the Supreme Court cancelled his bail order last week on April 18.
While cancelling Mishra’s bail, the Supreme Court had also asked the high court to decide his bail plea afresh and the plea came up for hearing before Justice Singh’s bench. But he recused himself from hearing it afresh without giving any reason for withdrawing himself from the single-judge bench hearing the bail plea.
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Since the next hearing of the bail plea too was not scheduled, it could be fixed only after the constitution of a new bench to hear it, a court official said.
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Ashish Mishra had been arrested in the October 3 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case in which eight people, including four farmers and a journalist, were killed and several others were injured when a convoy of SUVs, including a Thar allegedly owned by his father, had mowed down four farmers.
According to the FIR lodged in the case, Ashish Mishra was sitting in one of the cars. The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had granted regular bail to Ashish Mishra, observing that the present case was one of “accident by hitting with the vehicle”.
But the Supreme Court cancelled the bail, saying that the victims were denied “a fair and effective hearing” by the Allahabad High Court, which adopted a “myopic view of the evidence”.
The apex court had also asked Ashish Mishra to surrender before the court while asking the high court to hear his bail plea afresh.
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