A bail order granted just days earlier has been put on hold, after the Bombay High Court took the unusual step of acting on its own initiative — without any party filing an appeal — to intervene in a case involving an alleged assault on hospital staff in Thane district.
The case traces back to the night of July 6, at a municipal hospital in Dombivli. A family had been advised to transfer their newborn to another facility, and in the aftermath, Ramesh Mhatre — a corporator with the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation — along with several aides, allegedly assaulted two doctors and a number of nursing staff. Mhatre and his associates were arrested over the incident.
On July 14, a court in Thane granted Mhatre bail. It was that decision the High Court chose to revisit. On Saturday, in a special sitting, a Bench of Acting Chief Justice Ravindra V. Ghuge and Justice Gautam Ankhad took suo motu cognisance of media reports on the case, describing the matter as serious enough to warrant the Court's direct attention.
The Bench didn't hold back in its assessment of the lower court's decision, describing the bail order as "perverse" and staying it altogether. It found that the Magistrate's court had treated the case far too lightly, and had failed to even factor in Mhatre's history of criminal cases before granting him bail. On that front, the High Court flagged that Mhatre has 18 assault cases registered against him — though he has been acquitted in 17 of them. As part of its order, the Bench directed Mhatre to surrender before the police by Sunday evening.
The matter has been listed for further hearing on July 21, when the High Court is expected to take up the case in greater detail.