Delhi court convicts AAP MLAs for rioting, attacking policemen

New Delhi: A court here has convicted AAP MLAs Akhilesh Pati Tripathi and Sanjeev Jha for being part of a mob that attacked policemen at Burari police station in north Delhi in 2015.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Vaibhav Mehta also convicted 15 others in a case of rioting and causing hurt to police personnel at a police station.

Besides the MLAs, the court 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.

They were found 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 the prosecution of common object) of IPC.

The court will hear the case on the quantum of sentence on September 21, where they may get a maximum three-year jail term.

“This court is of the view that 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 and they had indulged in sloganeering and had provoked the crowd, and encouraged them to get violent, and as a result of which they resorted to stone pelting thereby causing injuries on some police officials,” the judge said in a 149-page judgement passed on September 7.

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.

According to the prosecution, the incident took place on the night of February 20, 2015, when a mob attacked the police personnel at Burari police station and damaged property.

The mob was demanding the custody of two men — allegedly to beat them up — arrested and brought to the police station.

The police had tried to pacify the crowd but the MLAs joined the mob and attacked them and resorted to stone pelting, the prosecutor told the court.

The judge held that the prosecution witnesses were “consistent” in their statements on the point of presence of the two legislators at the place of the incident and had indicated that they were not only “active participants but in fact leading the crowd”.

Besides, the two men were stated to have provoked the mob as a part of a “common object of the unlawful assembly” in order to “teach police officials a lesson and to overawe the police by force”.

The judgment, however, acquitted 10 persons in the case.