Delhi court summons Kejriwal, Sisodia, 11 AAP MLAs as accused in CS assault case

New Delhi, Sep. 18 (PTI): A Delhi court Tuesday summoned Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 AAP MLAs as accused in the Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash assault case.
Prakash was allegedly assaulted during a meeting at Kejriwal’s official residence on February 19 night.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal issued summons after taking cognisance of the charge sheet filed by the Delhi Police on August 13.

The court issued summons to all the accused and directed them to appear before it on October 25, saying there were sufficient grounds to establish the charges against them in the case.

Besides, Kejriwal and Sisodia, the charge sheet also names 11 legislators of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as accused. They are Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.

The court had on August 25 reserved the order while rejecting a plea moved by Kejriwal, his deputy and the other legislators seeking to restrain the police from sharing with the media information on the charge sheet in the case.

The court had said it needed time to go through the 1,300-page charge sheet, in which the police has alleged that Kejriwal, Sisodia and the others had criminally conspired to threaten the Chief Secretary with death or grievous hurt, obstructed him in discharging his public function and caused hurt.

The charge sheet had accused the AAP leaders of other offences punishable under various sections of the IPC, including wrongful confinement, assaulting or using criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of duty, insulting him to provoke breach of peace and abetment of the offence.

They were also charged with offence committed under IPC section 149, which says if an offence is committed by a member of an unlawful assembly, every other member of such assembly shall be held guilty of the offence.

The Delhi Police had on May 18 questioned Kejriwal for over three hours in connection with the case. Two of the party MLAs — Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal — were also arrested.

The alleged assault had triggered a bitter tussle between the Delhi government and its bureaucrats.