Varvara Rao has been granted regular bail by the Supreme Court on August 10, 2022. The bail has been granted on medical grounds. As per the order of the Bench of Justices UU Lalit and S Ravindra Bhat:

Matter has not even been taken up for framing of charges and the discharge applications by accused and others are also pending. The medical condition of Rao has not improved over period of time so that bail granted is withdrawn. We thus find P Varavara Rao is entitled to bail on medical grounds. We thus delete the para limiting the bail to a period of time.

The apex court made it clear that this order shall not impact the cases of the other accused or Rao on merits. Rao has been ordered by the court not to leave the jurisdiction of Mumbai. The court has given Rao the liberty to receive medical treatment of his choice. But he has been asked by the court to keep the National Investigation Agency (NIA) informed about the medical treatment received by him.

Rao has been accused of delivering an inciteful speech during the Elgar Parishad near Pune, which incited the Bhima – Koregaon violence in 2018. One person was killed and several others were injured in the violent clashes. FIR was lodged against Rao by the Pune Police at Vishrambagh Police Station on January 8, 2018, under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and several other provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Rao was arrested on August 28, 2018, from his home in Hyderabad and has been under trial since then. Rao was initially put under house arrest. He was later taken into police custody on November 17, 2018, and shifted to Taloja Jail.

Allegations are made against Rao for having links with the banned far-left organization CPI(Maoist). NIA had opposed the bail plea of Rao in the court by giving the reference to the documents related to CPI (M) titled ‘strategy and tactics of Indian revolution’, found during the probe. As stated in the counter affidavit of the NIA:

The central task of CPI (Maoist) was not to wage a conventional war but people’s war by mobilizing people on a massive scale both militarily and politically. Document refers to subverting democratic institutions to further their ulterior motive.