Agencies / New Delhi
The Delhi Police today named Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia as accused in its charge sheet in connection with the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash in February.
The charge sheet was filed before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal. It has also named as accused 11 legislators of the Aam Aadmi Party — Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.
In its charge sheet, the police has alleged that Kejriwal, Sisodia and others had criminally conspired to threaten the Chief Secretary of death or grievous hurt, obstructed him in discharging his public function and caused hurt. It has also accused the AAP leaders of other offences punishable under sections of IPC, including wrongfully confining any person, assaulting or using criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of duty, insulting him to provoke breach of peace and abetment of the offence.
The court has put up the charge sheet for consideration on August 25. If convicted, the accused may get a maximum of seven year jail term.
The Delhi Police had on May 18 questioned Kejriwal for over three hours in connection with the alleged assault on Prakash.
Prakash was allegedly assaulted during a meeting at Kejriwal’s official residence on the night of February 19. The police said the chief minister was present when the alleged assault took place. The police have already questioned 11 AAP MLAs present at the chief minister’s residence for the meeting. Two of the party MLAs — Amantullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal were arrested in the case.
‘A sinister conspiracy of the Centre through a handpicked bureaucrat’ : AAP
The other five AAP ministers issued a joint statement on Monday afternoon terming it “bogus” and “politically motivated”. They said this was “the latest example of the Central government’s ongoing unprecedented witch-hunt against the Delhi government, elected with highest ever mandate in India’s electoral history”.
The statement by the ministers said after the Centre failed in its objective despite using all its might and coercion, which included “ keeping 400 files locked in the Lieutenant Governor’s house for more than four months in a desperate bid to search for anything to implicate the chief minister and his council of ministers in false cases”, it hatched the “latest sinister conspiracy” through a “handpicked bureaucrat of the BJP’s Central government to defame the chief minister and deputy chief minister in a totally false and untenable case.”