A Delhi court has convicted AAP MLA Som Dutt for beating and assaulting a man during the 2015 Assembly election campaign.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal held Mr. Dutt, a legislator from the Sadar Bazar constituency here, guilty under Section 325 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt without provocation), 341 (wrongful restraint), 147 (rioting) and Section 149 (unlawful assembly) of the Indian Penal Code.
“There is no doubt that on January 10, 2015, around 8 p.m., Som Dutt, along with his 50 supporters, went to flat no. 13 where the complainant was present. The complainant was beaten and assaulted by the accused and his associates due to which he suffered grievous injury,” the court said.
Grievous injury
The maximum punishment for causing grievous injury is seven years. The court will pronounce the quantum of sentence on July 4.
The court, however, said the offence of wrongful restraint (Section 341 IPC) is not made out in this case as the complainant was not going anywhere and he was not restrained from proceeding in any direction.
“Further, Section 147 of the IPC, which punishes the offence of rioting, is also not made out considering that the intention of the accused was only to beat the complainant and no further.
“It is not clear how many persons, apart from the accused, had assaulted the complainant and what was their common object, if any,” the court said.
An FIR was lodged against Mr. Dutt in 2015 at the Gulabi Bagh police station in North Delhi on the allegation that the MLA and around 50 of his supporters, while campaigning in the locality, had come to the house of complainant Sanjeev Rana.
The prosecutor had alleged that when the complainant objected, the MLA allegedly hit him on his legs with a baseball bat and his supporters dragged him out on the road and started beating him, causing grievous injury.
Mr. Dutt’s counsel had refuted the arguments, saying the MLA and his supporters were peacefully campaigning in the society and it was the complainant who started quarrelling with Mr. Dutt in an inebriated state, on which a cross FIR was also registered by the legislator.
