New Delhi: A Mumbai court has rejected the plea of academician Anand Teltumbde to attend a literature festival in Kochi organised by the media house, Malayala Manorama.
The court ruled that an invitation to speak at the festival was not an extreme circumstance that could fulfil the bail conditions imposed by the Bombay High Court in November 2022. Instead, the invitation to speak at the festival was a “luxury” and nothing more than an academic exercise, it said.
The Dalit rights activist, who is also elder brother of slain Maoist Central Committee member Milind Teltumbde, had moved the trial court seeking permission as per the conditions imposed by the HC while releasing him on bail in November 2022. He sought the court’s permission to travel to Kochi for two days in the last week of November.
An accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence, Teltumbde was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in April 2020. Bhima Koregaon was the site of clashes on 1 January 2018, the 200th anniversary of a battle where a British army comprising Dalits beat forces led by Brahmin Peshwa.
The Bombay HC granted bail to him in November 2022, which, among other restrictions, required him to seek the trial court’s permission before moving out of its jurisdiction.
The NIA has accused Teltumbde of being the general secretary of the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) and a member of the Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committee, a frontal organisation of the banned outfit Communist Party of India (Maoist). Among other allegations, the NIA had alleged that the CPI (Maoist) had spent nearly Rs 10 lakh on international travels to further its agenda.
“I am aware that, on earlier occasions, this and some of the accused are granted the same liberty to go beyond the local limits of jurisdiction of the court. On the last occasion also i.e. on 29.09.2025, this same applicant/accused moved same sort of application to travel beyond the local limits of jurisdiction of the court, i.e., to go to Bengaluru for academic purpose but when this court apprised the applicant/accused about the intention behind restrictions imposed by the high court, then the applicant/accused not pressed that application,” special judge C.S.Baviskar observed Wednesday in the order.
A similar application, the court said, was moved on almost the same grounds.
“The grounds and reason contended by the applicant/accused in this application also not sort of an emergency or extreme circumstances which are inevitable and make him incumbent to go. It is a sort of luxury, academic though. Hence, I proceed to pass the following order,” the court said, denying travel permission to Teltumbde.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: No mosquito nets, no medicine—Teltumbde recounts life in prison in ‘The Cell and the Soul’