A Mumbai court has rejected the National Investigation Agency’s application to cancel the bail granted to four activists in the Bhima Koregaon case, reported Bar and Bench on Sunday.The investigating agency had sought that the bail granted to activists Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves be cancelled on the grounds that they had attended a gathering at the Mumbai Press Club in January along with other persons accused in the case.This violated their bail conditions, alleged the agency.On Friday, Special Judge Chakor S Baviskar said that the activists may have spoken about the case when they met.“By that alone, it cannot be concluded that, they committed breach of the condition imposed, that ‘the accused shall not come in contact or communicate with co-accused or any other person involved in similar activities’,” said the judge.He also pointed out that the activists met each other inside and outside the courtroom during the hearing of the case.“Hence, merely because a venue of the meeting/gathering of the accused changed, they cannot be said to have committed breach of the bail condition, as above and as alleged,” Bar and Bench quoted Baviskar as saying.Rao was granted interim medical bail by the Bombay High Court in February 2021 and the bail order was confirmed by the Supreme Court in August 2022. Bharadwaj was granted default bail by the Bombay High Court in December 2021 as the agency had not filed a chargesheet within the stipulated time of 90 days.Gonsalves and Ferreira spent almost five years in custody before the Supreme Court granted them regular bail in July 2023, with certain conditions.In the application seeking the cancellation of bail of the activists, the NIA claimed that the gathering at the Mumbai Press Club was convened with the intention of propagating the ideology of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and deciding on the future of the “Urban Naxal movement.In April, the Mumbai Press Club suspended three members for having “facilitated” the gathering on January 19. The NIA had, on May 1, sought documents from the press club related to the gathering.A Mumbai City Civil Court on May 7 stayed the expulsion of one of the Mumbai Press Club members, Gurbir Singh.It held that on a preliminary reading, action had been taken against him “only with an intent to prevent him from contesting the elections of the club”.The caseThe Bhima Koregaon case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.The NIA has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sixteen people were arrested in the case.But when the Supreme Court in 2023 granted bail to two persons accused in the case, it noted that the primary evidence cited by the NIA – a batch of letters – was of “weak probative value or quality”. In addition, a digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, concluded that false evidence had been planted on the laptops and devices of the accused persons.Of the 16 accused persons, 14 have been released on bail. Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who was also accused in the case, died in prison in 2021.Another accused man, Surendra Gadling, got bail from the Bombay High Court on May 4. However, he remains in jail as his bail application in a 2016 arson case is pending before the Supreme Court.Edited by Sneha.Also read: Anand Patwardhan writes about the taming of the Mumbai Press Club