Court vs Court

Subject :Polity

Context:

Recently SC ordered suspending Bombay HC’s acquittal of GN Saibaba Case.
The order was stayed at an emergency hearing on Saturday, one day after the former professor and five others had been acquitted for having Maoist links.

What is GN Saibaba Case:

GN Saibaba, who is 90% disabled, and five others were convicted by a trial court in 2017 for allegedly having links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoists) and a frontal organisation, the Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment, while one was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

What was the High Court judgment :

The High court had two core findings.
The first was that cognisance was taken by the trial court without sanction being granted by the sanctioning authority as required by the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA) under section 45(1).
The second important issue of law that the High Court has dealt with was section 45 (2) of UAPA which requires an exhaustive review of the prosecution evidence by an authority independent of the prosecution.
The Bombay High Court found that the proceedings in these trials were null and void as they did not have a valid sanction Under Section 45 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

Why Supreme Court suspended the order:

The bench of Justices MR Shah and Bela Trivedi heard the matter.
The bench stated that the High Court had not entered into the merits of the case and had not dealt with the facts of the case and found the accused not guilty. Rather, it only discharged all the accused on the ground that the sanction was not valid.
The court said that the accused persons had been convicted of a “very serious” crime “against the sovereignty and integrity of the country”.
It said that the accused could apply for bail and listed the matter for the next hearing on December 8.