One of Sen’s lawyers, Mahendra Dubey, said the court believed there was a prima facie case against Sen and Piyush Guha, a Calcutta-based businessman who is a co-accused in the case and is serving a life term. Guha’s bail plea was rejected, too.
Sen’s lawyers now have their hopes pinned on the Supreme Court. “We will file a special leave petition before the Supreme Court in the next fortnight. We have a better ground for bail in the Supreme Court. It had granted him bail in May 2009. The high court had denied him bail twice before, in August 2007 and December 2008,” Dubey said.
But Chhattisgarh additional advocate-general Kishore Bhaduri said the state would oppose Sen’s bail in the Supreme Court, too.
The lawyers of Sen, who has also appealed against the life term given by a sessions court, said they did not expect his petition to be heard in the high court until 2015 because of the huge backlog of cases.
The rejection of Sen’s plea came two days after 40 Nobel laureates appealed for his release.
BJP MP and lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who also represented Sen, questioned the evidence on the basis of which the Raipur sessions court convicted the activist.
Sen’s wife Ilina termed today’s judgment “entirely one-sided”. She said Jethmalani would represent her husband in the apex court.
At Kalyani in Bengal, Sen’s mother Anasuya Sen broke down on hearing the order and said the Chhattisgarh government had “hatched a conspiracy to keep my son behind bars”.