Siddique Kappan bail: The Allahabad High Court on Friday granted bail to Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan in a case initiated against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), Bar and Bench reported.
A single-judge bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh granted him bail.
The development comes three months after the Supreme Court granted bail to Kappan, in September 2022, in a case filed against him by the Uttar Pradesh Police under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
However, he remained in jail due to the ED case, for which he was denied bail in October by a Lucknow sessions court.
Kappan, a reporter for Malayalam news portal Azhimukham, and secretary of the Delhi unit of the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ), was arrested along with three others in Uttar Pradesh in October 2020, while on his way to Hathras to report on the gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit girl.
Following this, he was first booked under UAPA and then PMLA.
The PMLA case, in which Kappan was accused of receiving money from the Popular Front of India to “incite riots”, had been filed against him and others by the Enforcement Directorate in February 2021.
In the UAPA case, he was denied bail by lower courts and the Allahabad High Court, before the top court granted him relief.
