New Delhi: A television journalist, who had covered the 2005 discovery of a mass graveyard of Gujarat communal riot victims at Panderwada near Godhra, but was wanted by the state police for allegedly causing communal strife through his coverage, was granted a short-period bail today by the Delhi High Court.
Justice Ajit Bharihoke granted short-span 'transit bail' to TV scribe Rahul Singh till March 11 to facilitate him to approach the appropriate local court in the state and seek regular bail in the criminal case lodged against him.
The police had booked Singh and some social activists, fighting legal battles on behalf of Muslim riot victims, in 2006 for allegedly creating communal discord by fabricating false evidence and for trespassing into the graveyard and desecrating it.
Justice Bharihoke granted bail to Rahul on a personal bond of Rs 25,000. Singh's counsel Arjun Harkauli had sought bail for him saying the mass grave in Panderwada village had yielded remains of 21 alleged victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
He said his client Rahul Singh had reported the news about the exhumation of human remains by the victims' family members in December 2005 for a New Delhi-based television news channel.
He argued that his client's name is not mentioned in the FIR but police has been looking for him to arrest him. He said a Gujarat police team, looking for his client, had reached Rahul's native place in Bhopal where his father, a senior journalist with an English daily, stays.
The police had been quizzing Singh regaerding his son's whereabouts and been troubling him, alleged Rahul's counsel in the court.