Aam Aadmi Party national joint secretary and former MLA Indranil Rajyaguru, a sitting corporator in the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) and Congress’s Gujarat state general secretary Jashwantsinh Bhatti were among 10 politicians who were acquitted by a trial court in Rajkot Thursday by giving them benefit of doubt in a case of assaulting then Rajkot municipal commissioner Mukesh Kumar and vandalising his office in 2004. Police had booked Rajyaguru, then a corporator of Congress which was in power in the RMC, and 12 others as well as a mob of 30 people for allegedly assaulting the then municipal commissioner while leading a delegation to protest a water cut in 2004. They were booked under section 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 341 (wrongful restraint), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 147 (rioting), and other relevant sections of the IPC as well as the Damage to Public Property Act. Police had filed chargesheet against Rajyaguru and 12 others. However, proceedings against Shakil Barkat Kureshi, Satubha Jadeja and Jagdish Purabiya were dropped as they died during pendency of the case. Delivering its judgement, the court of Kirtikumar Gohel, the additional chief judicial magistrate of Rajkot acquitted all the 10 accused. The judge noted in his judgment that the prosecution had failed to prove its case that the accused had formed an unlawful assembly and assaulted the municipal commissioner and vandalised the officer’s office. “Our defence was that we had not assaulted anybody, indulged in rioting or damaged any property. If at all anything of that sort had happened, it was done by the mob of 30 people who were not charge-sheeted and therefore were not accused before the court. The court believed in our submission and acquitted the accused by giving them benefit of doubt,” Bhavin Daftari, advocate of Rajyaguru and eight others told The Indian Express. Police had filed chargesheet against Rajyaguru, Sagathiya, Bhatti, Kurshi, Jadeja, Purabiya, Govind Sabhaya, Pravin Sorani, Keyur Masrani, Nitin Nathwani, Vijay Chauhan, Bahadur Sindhav, and Jayant Thakkar. Of the 13 accused, seven—Rajyaguru, Kureshi, Jadeja, Sorani, Sindhav, Chauhan and Nathwani—were sitting corporators of Congress in the RMC. Bhatti was then president of Rajkot city unit of Congress, the party which was in power in the RMC then. Sagathiya was elected corporator of RMC on Congress tickets in 2010, 2015 and 2021. Rajyaguru, on the other hand, was elected MLA from Rajkot (east) Assembly constituency on a Congress ticket in 2012. Newsletter | Click to get the day's best explainers in your inbox However, both Rajyaguru and Sagathiya defected to the AAP in May this year and AAP has declared Sagathiya as its candidates for Rajkot (rural) constituency for the upcoming Assembly election. “I had full faith in the judiciary that we will get justice and today, we have got justice. We had gone there to represent people’s problem and had done nothing wrong,” Sagathiya told The Indian Express. Bhatti also said that he too had faith in the judiciary. “The then municipal commissioner was acting at the behest of the BJP even though Congress was in power. We had gone there to make a representation on behalf of people but had done nothing wrong. That said, I was prepared to go to jail if raising people’s voice is a crime,” said the Congress leader. Rajyaguru was not available for comments.
