“Right this moment, points like hypertension, diabetes are frequent. The place is the query of home arrest? Tomorrow, this court docket will probably be flooded, it should turn out to be like a market with 1000’s of jail inmates asking for home arrest,” Singh stated. Chaudhry, nevertheless, termed Singh’s apprehension of being flooded with requests for home arrest from jail inmates as unfounded.

“Police guards could be posted outdoors his (Navlakha’s) home, however how will the court docket cease him from utilizing social media, the web in his home? That is very harmful. He’s an accused in a matter regarding nationwide safety and he needs to remain in his home,” Singh stated. The NIA counsel additional stated it was frequent data that India was a crowded nation and that town of Mumbai was overcrowded. Due to this fact, the Taloja jail being overcrowded was not an enough purpose for grant of home arrest.

The Maharashtra authorities, too, opposed Navlakha’s plea and advised a bench of Justice SB Shukre and Justice GA Sanap that the jail authorities will present requisite medical care to the activist. The state’s counsel, Sangeeta Shinde, refuted allegations of denial of fundamental medical care and different requirements made by Navlakha in opposition to the jail authorities. “He has been saved in a excessive safety cell and he’s the one one in his cell,” she stated.

Shinde stated Navlakha’s allegations on the jail bogs being unhygienic had been incorrect since these lodged in excessive safety cells had been required to scrub their cells and bogs themselves. “He has been supplied with phenyl and acid (for cleansing functions),” Shinde stated. Responding to the HC’s earlier question on a e book by famous English writer and humorist PG Wodehouse being denied to Navlakha by jail officers on floor of safety risk, the state counsel stated the e book had been despatched by the activist’s household at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was raging and as a safety measure, no parcels from outdoors had been allowed within the jail.

The HC, nevertheless, refused to simply accept the justification and identified that the jail authorities had merely talked about “safety risk” as floor for not permitting entry of the e book to the activist and never talked about Covid-19 as a purpose of their written affidavit.

Advocate Chaudhry advised the HC that the state and the NIA’s apprehension of the court docket being flooded with requests for home arrest had been unfounded since, as per the NHRC knowledge, only one,874 inmates aged above 50 had been lodged as undertrials in Maharashtra and that almost 20 per cent of them had been more likely to be above the age of 70.