The Supreme Court late Saturday night protected social activist Teesta Setalvad from arrest and stayed for a week the Gujarat High Court order rejecting her plea for regular bail and asking her to surrender immediately in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence to frame innocent people in 2002 post-Godhra rioGt cases.

In a special late-night hearing, a rarity on holidays and during vacations, a bench of Justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna and Dipankar Datta questioned the denial of time to Setalvad to appeal against the HC order, saying even an ordinary criminal is entitled to some form of interim relief.

“In ordinary circumstances, we would not have considered such a request. However, it is to be noted that after FIR was registered on June 25, 2022, and the petitioner was arrested, this court considered the prayer for grant of interim bail and granted the same on certain conditions on September 2, 2022. One of the factors which weighed with this court was that the petitioner is a woman and entitled to special protection under section 437 of CrPC.

“We find that taking into consideration this fact, the learned single judge ought to have granted some protection so that the petitioner has sufficient time to challenge the order passed by the single judge. In that view of the matter without going into the merits, finding that learned single judge was not correct in granting even some protection, we stay the impugned order for a period of 1 week,” the bench said after a 37-minute hearing.

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The apex court said the registry shall obtain orders from the CJI for listing Setalvad’s bail plea before an appropriate bench. As the hearing commenced before the three-judge bench, senior advocate C U Singh, appearing for Setalvad, submitted that the top court had on September 2, 2022 granted interim protection to the activist till the high court decided her bail application.

Singh stated it is nobody’s case that she has violated any condition of the interim bail granted to her. “The Gujarat high court refused to stay the operation of the order for 30 days, but no reasons were given to explain the rejection in its order and immediate surrender was ordered,” he said.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Gujarat government, urged the court to mete out the same treatment to Setalvad as to any ordinary citizen. “I would expect your lordships to do the same thing which will be done in the case of a common man who has been rejected bail since she is a common criminal,” the law officer said.

The vacation bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Prashant Kumar Mishra referred the matter to Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, who swiftly put together a bench of three judges to hear Setalvad’s petition challenging the high court order at 9:15 pm. Earlier in the day, Justice Nirzar Desai of the Gujarat High Court directed her to surrender immediately as she was out of jail after having secured interim bail from the apex court in September last year.