Sri. Sreedhar Pasham @ Sreedhar @ Tillu vs State of Karnataka

V. Jagannathan, J.—The Petitioner said to he accused No. 6 in Cr. No. 275/10 based on the complaint filed by thePolice Inspector of CCB, Bangalore, is involved in the commission of the offences alleged under Sections 120B, 121, 121A of IPC and Section 18 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

The case of the prosecution in short is that, the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakisthan had hatched a conspiracy to establish, the contact with Maoist elements in India through under world criminals who are operating from abroad and accused No. 1 is said to be acting in consulting with the ISI to organize terrorist activities in India and for that purpose, to create internal disturbances and to destabilize the union of India, has thought a conspiracy and accused No. 2 engaged accused No. 3 and entrusted with the task of establishing contacts with Naxalite leaders of India particularly form Andhra Pradesh for the purpose of terrorist acts on payment basis.

It is with the aforesaid plan, accused No. 3 contacted accused No. 4 and thereafter, accused No. 4 told accused Nos. 2 & 3 that an amount of Rs. 2 crores have to be paid for cerrying out the purpose of conspiracy that was batched by the other accused and towards this end accused No. 3 sent Re. 25 lakhs to accused No. 4 and as per the statement of the prosecution witness, in particular CW-1.7, this Petitioner was also actively participated with the other accused persons and the Petitioner said to have passed on a pistol to accused No. 5 and this Petitioner was also the beneficiary of Rs. 25 lakhs that was sent by accused No. 3 and the other accused persons i.e. accused Nos. 1 to 4 are absconding.

Learned Counsel for the Petitioner submitted that the trial court has granted bail to accused Nos. 7 & 8 and the High Court of Andhra Pradesh has also granted bail to this Petitioner in similar case in CP. No. 8196/10 and therefore, in the light of the aforesaid material and nothing being recovered from this Petitioner, bail be granted to him, Referring to the order of the trial court, submission made is that, even the trial court has noted that the pistol and live bullets were seized from the accused Devaiah @ Sachin and even the passports of the accused who were given bail has been seized and mere possessing of passport cannot be given under importance as it is commonnowadays with travelling by air and holding a passport having become almost commonfeature. Under these circumstances and also having regard to the punishment prescribed for the offence under the Unlawful Activities Act, Petitioner therefore be released on bail by imposing conditions.

On the other hand, learned Addl. SPP referring to the objections fifed, submitted that, the case of the prosecution as mentioned earlier itself goes to show that grant of bail to this Petitioner at this stage would not be in the interest of the country as tampering of the evidence and threatening of the witnesses cannot be ruled out. He also referred to the statements of C Ws 4, 7 and 12 to submit that these witnesses likely to be threatened if the Petitioner is granted bail.

Having thus heard both sides and as far as grant of bail by the trial court to other accused are concerned, the trial court has clearly observed that except the Petitioner, others who are before it could be granted bail and secondly, bail granted to the accused persons by the High Court of Andhra Pradesh was on the footing that there was no allegation in the complaint against the accused persons before the High Court and this was the reason that prompted the High Court to grant bail to the other accused persons Whereas, in the case that is on hand, the statement of both the witnesses indicate the involvement of this Petitioner at various stages of the conspiracy scheme.

7, Having regard to the serious nature of the offences alleged, grant of bail at this stage is likely to lead tampering of evidence and witnesses being threatened cannot be ruled out and also chances of the Petitioner absconding also is possible having regard to the nature of the entire allegations made by the prosecution.

For the aforesaid reasons, petition is rejected.