AAP MLA booked for rioting

Goel likely to be Speaker

The Aam Aadmi Party legislator from Shahdara Ram Niwas Goel has been booked for rioting, and causing hurt while he was trying to expose a local builder in Vivek Vihar of indulging in alleged electoral malpractices during the recently concluded Delhi Assembly elections.

The complainant Manish Ghai had approached police  after the incident on the night of February 6 and the case was registered a few hours after that. Goel is likely to be made the new Speaker of the Delhi Assembly.

In his complaint, Ghai told police that some labourers stayed at the raided building that was owned by him. He received a call from one of them at about 9.30 pm on February 6 about Goel and his associates forcibly entering the building and damaging the property.

He alleged that the group had broken the almirah drawers, kitchen items, window panes and mirrors in the house. When the labourers tried to resist their entry, they were allegedly physically assaulted.

He also complained that the AAP workers circulated abusive messages about him and his family in the form of video clips on social networking sites. Police had booked the MLA and some others for rioting, trespassing, causing mischief and voluntarily causing hurt.

While Goel was not immediately available for comment, his aide Ritesh Chaturvedi told Deccan Herald that the raid at Ghai’s building in Shahdara was done in the presence of a police team that comprised  the local Station House Officer and Assistant Commissioner of Police among others. Chaturvedi is among those named in the first information report (FIR). Deccan Herald is in possession of the FIR copy.

“Some locals had called up the police control room (PCR) number to inform of liquor being stocked up by a BJP worker inside that house. Our supporters gathered there and entered the house in the presence of a police team and recovered 250 new blankets, photocopies of 5,000 voter id cards, 8-10 liquor bottles, 15 empty liquor cartons and calendars bearing the name of the local BJP candidate but not carrying the printer’s name,” alleged Chaturvedi.

He said Goel would raise the issue in the Assembly after being elected the Speaker on Monday. He claimed that police had seized much of these recovered items. Senior police officers of the east Delhi district, however, did not respond to phone calls.