Two years after his detention in connection with two land grabbing cases, Popular Builders’ owner Raman Patel, a CBI witness in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, has been granted conditional bail by the Supreme Court.
While granting him bail, the court externed him from Gujarat and ordered him to keep city police posted about his location by activating his mobile GPS device.
His cellphone will remain connected with the station house officers’ mobile phones, so that his exact location is known.
The apex court has said that Patel will have to continuously remain in contact with two police stations – Vastrapur and Sola, and any inaccessibility of his phone will result in cancellation of his bail.
He has been ordered to always keep his phone active and charged while on bail outside Gujarat.
However, Patel will not be able to leave the prison soon. After the bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari granted him bail on November 25, Patel was booked in one more case of land grabbing by cheating and forgery on Saturday.
A magisterial court sent him for custodial interrogation for one day.
Of the half-a-dozen cases of land grabbing, the Gujarat high court denied bail to Patel in two cases. The SC granted him bail but on condition that he will not enter Gujarat till the trial concludes.
Patel can enter Gujarat only for court proceedings and from the point of his entry, he will be escorted by police personnel provided by the city police commissioner. Patel will also have to bear the expenditure of the same.
The builder has been ordered to keep the SHOs of both the police stations continuously posted about his location and the police jurisdiction in which the location falls.
“The appellant shall ensure that his mobile phone remains active and properly charged so that he remains constantly accessible throughout his stay within and outside the State… The SHOs shall also regularly monitor his availability through the mobile phone. In the event he becomes inaccessible through his mobile phone, the concerned SHO shall immediately bring such fact to the notice of the trial court, and this could be grounds for cancelling his bail,” the SC order reads.
“The appellant shall activate in his own device the application through which his location status could be identified at any given point of time,” the SC has ordered.
