AAP in court to restrain police from sharing charge sheet with media
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday approached a court seeking to restrain the Delhi Police from sharing with the media details of the charge sheet it filed on Tuesday against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 AAP MLAs in connection with the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash. The plea was filed by AAP MLAs in the Patiala House court, which sent a notice to Delhi Police.
In their plea, the AAP MLAs alleged that the Delhi Police is indulging in character assassination of the Delhi CM as well as his deputy. They alleged that cops have been selectively leaking information to the media from the charge sheet filed in the Chief Secretary assault case.
In the plea, the MLAs pleaded: "Since the matter is sub-judice, the investigating agency has no power to leak the contents of the charge sheet to the media selectively, before the cognizance (of the charge sheet) is taken by the court."
The court has issued a notice to the Delhi Police seeking its reply in the matter. The court has fixed August 25 as the next date of hearing in the matter. The police on Monday filed the charge sheet in the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, nearly six months after the incident, and named Kejriwal, Sisodia, and 11 AAP MLAs as accused. The charge sheet was filed in the Patiala House Court before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal.
MLAs Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania were also named in the charge sheet. "On February 20, a case was registered on a complaint of Prakash. After completion of the investigation and upon collection of evidence on record, a charge sheet has been filed in the court," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Harinder Singh said on Monday.
The court will be taking cognizance of the charge sheet on August 25. The accused have been charged under IPC sections –186 (obstructing a public servant), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant for doing his duty), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) and 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant to discharge his duties).
Responding to the allegations, additional DCP North, Harender Kumar Singh said, "They have been filing a number of petitions in the court against police and me in particular, asking for the copy of the statements, copy of video CDs, monitoring of investigation by the court, harassment of their counsels by the police and so on. We will file the reply and clear our stand."
