A court on Wednesday discharged Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and nine other MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party in a 2018 case of alleged assault on former Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, Bar and Bench reported.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sachin Gupta, however, ordered the framing of charges in the case against two other Aam Aadmi Party MLAs – Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal.
Prakash had alleged that Khan and Jarwal assaulted him in Kejriwal’s home on February 19, 2018. The police had then questioned multiple AAP legislators who were present when the alleged incident took place, along with Kejriwal and Sisodia. In its chargesheet, the Delhi Police named 13 Aam Aadmi Party legislators, including Kejriwal and Sisodia.
The chief minister and his deputy were booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 120B (criminal conspiracy), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of duty), and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace).
Addressing a press briefing after the court’s verdict, Sisodia accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of hatching a conspiracy to frame Kejriwal in the case.
“Arvind Kejriwal is the most popular chief minister in India and that’s why the BJP is scared of him,” Sisodia said, reported News18. “This fear made [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi and his central government file a FIR [first information report] in a fake case and use the Delhi Police against Kejriwal ji.”
Apart from Kejriwal and Sisodia, the nine MLAs who were discharged in the case on Wednesday are Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.
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