The Supreme Court has granted bail to Jitendra Tyagi alias WasimRizvi who was an accused in the Haridwar hate speech case. The conditions for the bail includes not making any statement to media with regards with the pending case.
A bench comprising of Justice Ajay Rastogi and Justice BV Nagarathna said that there is no reason in keeping Jitendra Tyagi in custody when the charges have already been framed.
The charge sheet was filed in March and charges were framed against Tyagi and others by the trial court in May.
On January 13,Tyagi was arrested along with Yati Narsinghanand, who was the organiser of the Dharma Sansad which was held in Haridwar from December 17 to 19. They were both accused of promoting enmity between religions and hurting religious sentiments after videos of their speeches at the event surfaced on social media.
The bail was refused to Jitendra Tyagi by the Uttarakhand high court on March 8.Tyagi then moved to the Supreme Court stating of his failing medical health and the fact that other co-accused Narsinghanand was already granted bail in February.
A medical bail for 3 months was granted to Tyagi by the top court on May 17. On August 29, the top court directed him to surrender in order to argue his bail plea.
The Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, who is the lawyer for the Tyagi side along with advocate Pulkit Srivastava, gave a list of the cases pending against the petitioner and prayed to the court for a direction to club the FIRs related to hate speech.
The deputy advocate general of Uttarakhand deputy, Jatinder Kumar Sethi, however told the court that the three offences registered against Tyagi pertained to different incidents and under different offences which cannot be clubbed together.
In the Haridwar hate speech case, he was charged for offences under Section 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups and Section 298 (uttering words aimed to wound the religious feelings of any person) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The government of Uttarakhand has opposed the bail as it pointed out that there were three different offences registered against Tyagi in relation to hate speech.
The top court has asked for the response of the state government and issued notice on a separate petition moved by Tyagi to club all the first information reports (FIRs) against him.
The top court in May said that the statements made by Tyagi were not in good taste. “This is something which is spoiling the whole atmosphere,” the court observed.Tyagi,was earlier the Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Shia Wakf Board and known by the name Waseem Rizvi, converted to Hinduism in December