POCSO Court grants bail to Delhi Dy speaker Rakhi Birla, MLA Surinder

New Delhi: A Special POCSO Court here granted bail to Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla and MLA Surinder Singh (Commando) who were accused in a court complaint of barging into the home of an 11-year-old boy in Palam and intimidating him. The prominent AAP leaders had appeared in court, in response to summons issued by Delhi court, after dismissing a court complaint in this regard.

According to the court complaint, which was filed by the 11-year-old victim through his uncle, Birla and Singh, in January 2014, had allegedly led a crowd of supporters to the boy's home and threatened him for information on his parents. In the complaint, the child's uncle said that Singh allegedly started touching the boy inappropriately and threatened to "do untoward things to him and kill him" if he didn't divulge information on his parents' whereabouts. The complaint also alleged that Birla was watching all this while and threatened to burn down the boy's home if he didn't say where his parents were.

The alleged victim's uncle explained in the complaint that the boy's parents were not at home because they were entangled in legal matters of seeking anticipatory bail for the child's father, who was an accused in an FIR registered a few days before the alleged incident.

However, when the victim's family went to get an FIR registered at the concerned police station against Birla and Singh, their complaint was dismissed. The same thing happened when the family approached the court to file a complaint, which was dismissed.

Defense counsel for Singh, Ravi Drall, while arguing for his client's bail application, said that the complaint did not have much merit, given that there was no record of it in any police station and that the subsequent court complaint was filed more than 40 days after the alleged incident.

Moreover, defense counsel also pointed out that the FIR against the child's father included a murder charge under section 302 of the IPC. While passing the bail order for both Birla and Singh, the court asked the accused to post a bond of Rs 20,000 each and disposed off the summons application.