Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday allowed the jailed Telugu poet-activist Varavara Rao to be shifted to Mumbai’s Nanavati Hospital for fifteen days. The court also said that the Maharashtra state government will bear all the hospital expenses.
The court noted that he was almost on his deathbed.
In response to the plea filed by Rao’s wife Hemalatha, the High Court bench of Justice SS Shine and Madhav Jamdar added that Rao should not be discharged from the hospital without informing the court, and that his family should be allowed to meet him at the hospital. And “it goes without saying that the state will bear the expenses,” the bench added, according to Bar and Bench.
The next hearing of the case will be held on December 3.
Earlier, the court had directed a team from Nanavati Hospital to examine him via video conferencing and visit him in hospital if necessary without delay.
Raising questions on the medical report submitted, senior lawyer Indira Jaisingh, who was arguing on Rao’s behalf, said the neurologist and the urologist have not seen Varavara Rao though he has neurological problems and urinary infection.
Rao is currently lodged at Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai as an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregoan case, along with nine others. Maharashtra police arrested nine human rights activists from across the country in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence, which broke out in January 2018. Police, in its charge sheet, also alleged that activists were plotting to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi.