Chandigarh, Aug 27: A Chandigarh court on Friday acquitted 20 people, including former BJP councillors, who had been booked for allegedly manhandling two Hurriyat Conference leaders — including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq — more than a decade ago.
A detailed order in the case had not been released by the court at the time of filing this report.
The court of Jaspreet Singh Minhas, JMIC (Judicial Magistrate First Class) acquitted the accused — former Chandigarh Mayor Asha Jaiswal, former councillor Rajinder Kaur, Sunita Dhawan, Usha Sharma, Meena Sharma, Sanjay Kaul, Sanjeev Rana, Hemant Galav, Amit Rana, Chandan Sandhu, Satyavan Shera, Vijay Bharadwaj, Arvind Rana, Sunil Kansal, Sanjeev Verma, Parvesh Sharma, Dinesh Chauhan, Shumanshu Sharma, Dev Shri, and Satinder Singh — in the case. Two accused, Kuldeep Kaul and Santosh Sharma, died during the course of the trial.
As per police records, the incident took palce on November 25, 2010, when Hurriyat Conference leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Bilal Lone were allegedly manhandled by a group of activists who stormed into a seminar being conducted at Kisan Bhawan at Sector 35, Chandigarh. Mirwaiz was in Chandigarh to address a seminar on Pakistan-India relations and Kashmir.
According to reports, the incident took place when Mirwaiz started addressing a seminar on Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations. Following the incident, chaos engulfed the hall for close to 30 minutes, with protesters shouting slogans against Mirwaiz, the Hurriyat Conference and Pakistan. The police report also mentions about stones being pelted and flower pots being hurled at the leaders.
The Chandigarh Police had later rushed in additional forces to control the situationwith nearly 22 activists, including some women, being arrested from the spot and an FIR being registered at Police Station Sector 36, Chandigarh, under sections 147, 149 and 323 of the Indian Penal Code and section 3 of Public Property Damage Act. The complaint in the case was filed by Kheta Singh, organiser of the event.
In 2017, the accused had moved discharge application in the case submitting that the FIR against them was out of political vendetta, and nothing alleged in the complaint had actually happened.
The accused claimed that they had simply raised slogans in support of their motherland. The JMIC Court of Hirdejit Singh, on July 29, 2017, after hearing arguments had dismissed the discharge application of the accused, and ordered for framing of charges. The chargeseheet against the accused was then filed. Chandigarh Police, however, later moved an application in the trial court for withdrawing the case against the accused. The court of JMIC Saloni
Gupta, however, dismissed the application of Chandigarh Police for withdrawing the case, and ordered for framing of charges.
The Chandigarh Police in October 2018, filed a criminal revision against the order of the trial court, which dismissed its application for withdrawing the case against the accused.–(Agencies)
