In a 24-hour reprieve for activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand, the Supreme Court on Thursday stayed their arrest in a case of alleged misappropriation of funds for a memorial at Gulberg housing society, one of the areas devastated in the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat.

Just an hour after the Gujarat High Court dismissed the couple’s plea for anticipatory bail plea in the case, senior advocate Kapil Sibal made an urgent oral plea on their behalf before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu. Noting that his clients were met with an “extraordinary situation”, Mr. Sibal sought the court’s protection from arrest and to hear them on Friday.

The Bench, which was in the midst of hearing another matter, accepted Mr. Sibal’s plea and posted the matter for hearing on Friday. It further stayed the Gujarat police from arresting the couple during the interim.

Our correspondent Rahi Gaikwad reports from Ahmedabad:

Setalvads not cooperating: Gujarat HC

Even as the Supreme Court stayed the arrest of social activists Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand, the Gujarat High Court stressed on the need for their custodial interrogation, while rejecting their plea for anticipatory bail on Thursday.

It refused to grant them anticipatory bail in the Gulberg Society fund embezzlement case on the grounds that they did not cooperate with the investigators and that the allegations were serious.

The court said “there is no cooperation at all” from the couple.

“The applicants want to evade the interrogation and are not ready… to disclose the true facts. If such are the answers given by the applicants to the questions put by the investigating officer at a stage when they are under… an oral interim protection, I wonder what would be the position when they [are] armed with a full-fledged anticipatory bail order. It is at that stage… that the custodial interrogation becomes very important,” Justice J.B. Pardiwala said in his order.