Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court recently convicted two Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, Akhilesh Pati Tripathi and Sanjeev Jha, along with 15 others, for being part of a mob that attacked policemen at Burari police station in north Delhi in 2015. The court said that both the politicians had played a major role provoking and instigating the crowd.
The conviction orders were issued by Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Vaibhav Mehta who — apart from Mr. Tripathi and Mr. Jha — has also convicted 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.
Ten other accused persons were acquitted by the judge in the same case.
The matter pertains to the events of February 2, 2015, when all the accused persons, in form of an unlawful assembly, barged inside a police station and assaulted several policemen with an objective of assault, rioting and damaging public property.
AAP MLA Sanjeev Jha during. File | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
The police had filed an FIR against them 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 the prosecution of common object) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The prosecution has been able to prove beyond doubt that the accused persons, namely Sanjeev Jha and Akhilesh Pati Tripathi, were part of the unlawful assembly and were part of the mob; they had indulged in sloganeering and had provoked the crowd, and encouraged them to get violent, as a result of which they resorted to stone pelting, thereby causing injuries on some police officials, the court said.
The prosecution witnesses claimed that both the MLAs and their supporters were saying that “policewalo ko sabak sikhane ka samay aa gaya hai”, the court maintained in its order.
The judge also held that both the lawmakers were also part of the unlawful assembly, which had obstructed the police officials from doing their duties.
The court will hear the case on the quantum of sentence on September 21, where they may get a maximum three-year jail term.
