The Supreme Court has suspended the Bombay High Court order acquitting former Delhi University (DU) professor G N Saibaba and others in a Maoist-links case.
An apex court bench of justices M R Shah and Bela M Trivedi, which sat on a non-working day to hear the matter, also rejected Saibaba's request for putting him under house arrest in view of his physical disability and health conditions.
More than eight years after his arrest, the Bombay High Court acquitted Saibaba on Friday and ordered his release from jail, noting that the sanction order issued to prosecute the accused in the case under the stringent provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was "bad in law and invalid".
The Nagpur bench of the high court allowed Saibaba's appeal, challenging a 2017 order of the trial court that convicted him in the case and sentenced him to life imprisonment.