A local court in Delhi has convicted two MLAs of Aam Aadmi Party, along with 15 others, in a seven-year-old case related to rioting and attacking police personnel in a police station.
The Rouse Avenue Court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Vaibhav Mehta ruled on September 7 that MLAs Akhilesh Pati Tripathi and Sanjeev Jha had played a major role in provoking and instigating the crowd, which pelted stones at the policemen and damaged the property of Burari police station on February 20, 2015.
In its 149-page verdict, the court found the 17 accused guilty of offences under Sections 147 (rioting), 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of IPC, but acquitted of criminal intimidation and damaging property charges.
The accused included Balram Jha, Shyam Gopal Gupta, Kishore Kumar, Lalit Mishra, Jagdish Chandra Joshi, Narender Singh Rawat, Neeraj Pathak, Raju Malik, Ashok Kumar, Ravi Prakash Jha, Ismail Islam, Manoj Kumar, Vijay Pratap Singh, Heera Devi and Yashwant.
The court will take up debate on the quantum of sentence on September 21.
On February 20, 2015, an uncontrollable mob had attacked the policemen stationed at Burari police station. The rioting mob was demanding the police to hand over the two arrested people, so that they could beat them up.
Advocates Murari Kumar, Rahul Ranjan, Gorav Sharma and Achint Kumar appeared for all accused except Tripathi, while Additional Public Prosecutor Lalit Pingolia represented the state.