AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan was arrested on July 24. Express
Advertisement
Four days after he was arrested on charges of threatening a woman, the Delhi sessions court Thursday not only granted bail to AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan, but also rapped Delhi Police, who told the court that the complainant was being “pressurised to retract her statement”. The court pointed out that the woman, in her complaint, had not said that it was Khan who had threatened her.
Additional Sessions Judge Raj Kumar Tripathi said, “She (complainant) alleged she was receiving threatening calls from unknown numbers, asking her to withdraw her case or change the statement. The complainant has nowhere alleged that it was the accused who made any threatening calls to her.”
You have exhausted your monthly limit of free stories.
Read more stories for free with an Express account.
The court added, “There is no material on record to suggest that the accused has threatened or called the complainant to withdraw the case or change her statement”.
While granting bail to Khan, the court observed that he has “deep roots in society” and “there is no possibility of his absconding or fleeing from justice or not facing trial”.
Directing the MLA to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000, the court said, “He has already been remanded to police custody for two days. Thereafter, the police did not seek further remand. Nothing incriminating is to be recovered at the instance of present accused. The list of involvement of cases… furnished by police shows that out of four cases, he has already been acquitted in two cases and he has been discharged in two cases,” said the court.
The ASJ said since the complainant has already recorded her statement before the magistrate and has been provided adequate protection by the police, “there is no possibility of tampering with prosecution evidence or influencing witnesses”.
Khan had been arrested on July 24, after a 35-year-old woman filed a case against him, accusing him of “threatening her”. A case was registered under sections 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the IPC at the Jamia Nagar police station.
Story continues below this ad
Meanwhile, The bail application of AAP MLA from Mehrauli Naresh Yadav was rejected by the Malerkotla court Thursday. According to party sources, Yadav’s bail application will now be filed before the sessions court in Sangrur. Yadav was arrested for his alleged involvement in the desecration of the Quran.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
