An Indore district court sentenced Madhya Pradesh’s former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh, and six others to one year’s rigorous imprisonment on Saturday, in a case related to a clash with protesting workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in 2011. The court later granted bail to all the convicts on a surety of Rs 25,000 each.
Judge Mukesh Nath convicted Singh and former Ujjain MP Premchand Guddu under Indian Penal Code sections 325 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 109 (abetment to assault). Anant Narayan, Jaisingh Darbar, Aslam Lala and Dilip Chaudhary were convicted under IPC section 325. Mahesh Parmar (Congress MLA from Tarana), Mukesh Bhati and Hemant Chauhan were acquitted for lack of evidence. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 each on the convicts.
According to police, BJYM activists tried to show black flags to Singh on July 17, 2011, when his convoy was passing through Jiwajiganj area of Ujjain, which led to a clash. Rahul Sharma, the lawyer of Singh and Guddu, said they were accused of instigating others to beat up BJYM activist Ritesh Khabia. ‘Prosecution documents show Khabia had injury to the right hand, but the fact is he had a broken bone in his left hand’, he said.
‘This is a 10-year-old case in which my name was not even in the FIR, but was added later under political pressure. I will appeal in the High Court’ the Digvijaya Singh said.
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