Court grants bail to Maharashtra man accused of setting vada pav vendor on fire

The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to a man accused of setting a vada pav seller on fire in Maharashtra’s Ulhasnagar in 2017, citing the slow progress of proceedings in the case.
Despite various courts directing the prosecution to expedite the proceedings in the case twice, the bail order was passed as there was hardly any progress.
The high court bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dere was hearing the bail plea of Suresh Ahuja, who had been accused of throwing a bucket filled with kerosene at his competitor vada pav seller Chandarlal Ramratyani and setting him on fire. Ramratyani succumbed to burn injuries at ther hospital.
According to the prosecution’s case, victim Chandarlal Ramratyani was running his outlet at the exact spot where accused Ahuja used to run a vada pav stall.
A few months after Ahuja shut his stall, Ramratyani opened his outlet at the same spot. The former could not tolerate it. He had purportedly asked Ramratyani to shut the stall as he wanted to reopen his business at the same location. However, Ramratyani refused to oblige, angering Ahuja.
50-year-old Ramratyani had suffered 80 per cent burns and succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Meanwhile, Ahuja was arrested soon after the incident and the trial against him and proceedings began at the Kalyan Sessions court in Thane.
Advocate Swapna Kode, appearing for Ahuja, submitted on Thursday that on two different occasions, while rejecting Ahuja’s bail plea, the high court had expedited the trial.
“However, in the last seven years that Ahuja has been behind bars, only three witnesses have been produced in court while the prosecution intends to produce eight or nine witnesses more,” she submitted. Kode also specified that since June 2024, not a single witness had been produced in the trial court.
Justice Mohite-Dere noted that there had been “hardly any progress” in the trial and that a speedy trial is a right of an accused. The bench imposed certain conditions for the accused to follow and granted him bail.