The Bombay High Court has upheld the decision to frame charges against alleged Naxal operative Satyanarayana Rani in connection with the 2019 Gadchiroli blast case, which resulted in the deaths of 15 police personnel and one civilian. The court found the evidence presented against Rani sufficient to justify the charges.
A division bench comprising Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande dismissed the 73-year-old Rani’s appeal on July 10, challenging a special court’s August 2021 order refusing to discharge him from the case. The High Court’s order, released on Thursday, emphasized that the special court’s decision was based on substantial evidence pointing to Rani’s association with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
“The evidence (against Rani) justified framing of charge,” the High Court stated, noting that witness statements and other materials created a “grave suspicion” of Rani’s involvement with the CPI (M) and the conspiracy to carry out the blast. The court further elaborated that the chargesheet indicated Rani and other accused were part of a larger plot to destabilize the Indian government, culminating in the tragic attack.
The court underscored the principle that at the stage of framing charges, the judge’s role is to determine whether sufficient grounds exist to proceed against the accused, without delving into the probative value of the evidence. “There must exist some material for entertaining a strong suspicion, which can form the basis for the drawing of the charge and refusal to discharge the accused,” the bench stated.
In addition to dismissing Rani’s plea for discharge, the High Court allowed another petition he filed, challenging the special court’s decision to permit the prosecution to submit additional witness statements as evidence without filing a supplementary chargesheet. The bench ruled that this procedure was “completely unknown to law” and quashed the special court’s order.
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Rani was granted bail by the High Court in July 2022. He was arrested in June 2019 from Hyderabad, accused of being part of the conspiracy behind the May 1, 2019, IED blast that targeted a vehicle carrying members of the Maharashtra police’s Quick Response Team (QRT). The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is investigating the case.
