Gautam Navlakha house arrest: Supreme Court waives need for solvency certificate for surety

The Supreme Court on Tuesday waived the requirement of a solvency certificate towards local surety as part of the terms of house arrest of jailed activist and Bhima Koregaon accused, Gautam Navlakha. (Gautam Navlakha v. National Investigation Agency and anr).After the matter was mentioned on Tuesday, the Bench of Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy also directed that ration card should not be insisted upon as an additional ID proof, since other documents have been submitted.After the top court was informed that it would take at least six weeks to secure the said solvency certificate, it ordered, "Considering the submission and the circumstances, we deem it appropriate to waive the requirement of a solvency certificate for the petitioner to avail the benefit of our order dated 10.11.2022. It is ordered accordingly.".The matter was mentioned by Senior Advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan and Advocate Shadan Farasat. Additional Solicitor General SV Raju appeared for the National Investigation Agency (NIA)..On November 10 this year, the Supreme Court had allowed Navlakha to be shifted to house arrest from jail for a month, subject to certain conditions.One of the conditions was that Navlakha will have to pay ₹2.4 lakh to deploy security personnel outside his home. He was also told to furnish a surety of ₹2 lakh.He informed the special court that its assistant registrar objected to the surety being furnished without a solvency certificate, a ration card or an affidavit. He thus prayed for it to be provisionally accepted until filing of the solvency certificate, which could take a month.Further, he underlined that as per the criminal manual, a solvency certificate may be insisted upon only in cases involving doubt or large sums.The special court stated that since the surety amount was ₹2 lakh, solvency certificate was required to be furnished.Regarding the prayer for provisional acceptance of surety, the court directed the prosecution to file its response. It also asked the NIA to verify the surety and to file a report on the same..Navlakha had on Monday told a special court that the Navi Mumbai Police had refused to accept a Demand Draft (DD) of ₹2.4 lakh he furnished in compliance with the Supreme Court's order that allowed him to be placed under house arrest..Hence, he had moved an application through Advocate Chandni Chawla seeking directions to the Police Commissioner to accept the DD.Special Public Prosecutor Prakash Shetty had said that since he was representing the NIA and not the police, he needed time to file a reply to the application. Special judge RJ Kataria issued notice to the Commissioner of Navi Mumbai Police, granted NIA a day's time, and listed the matter for hearing on Tuesday. .[Read order]