Yashwant Sinha sent to jail

Senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, a former Union finance minister, was on Tuesday sent to jail for two weeks by a court in a case of alleged assault of an electricity official whose hands were tied during protests against blackouts in Jharkhand.

Judicial Magistrate R B Pal sent Sinha and 54 others to judicial custody for 14 days after they refused to take bail.

Sinha and 300 others were arrested on Monday after Jharkhand State Electricity Board’s (JSEB) Hazaribagh branch General Manager Dhanesh Jha filed an FIR accusing them of tying him up during a demonstration on electricity crisis by the BJP’s district unit here.

Sinha had admitted before the media on Monday that he had “instructed” the party’s women activists to tie up Jha using a rope.

“Yes, I asked them to tie the hands of the GM as women are the worst sufferers of power failure. Their children’s education is also suffering,” Sinha had told reporters.

A senior police officer had rescued Jha from the women.

Jha had said that the incident was “humiliating and insulting.”

According to the police, Sinha and around 300 BJP activists including 50 women, locked the office of JSEB, Hazaribagh unit, around 9 am and staged a sit-in and did not let any employee enter the office.

The women questioned Jha as to why Hazaribagh and Ramgarh districts reeled in power crisis, police said.