JOIN USFIR against Bharti after complaint of misbehaviour
The police have registered cases against the Aam Aadmi Party’s Malviya Nagar legislator Somnath Bharti and a ‘supporter’ of Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan after separate complaints of misbehavior against women.
The two cases have been filed even as the police have begun investigating the suicide of an AAP activist, after harassment by an aide of party’s Narela MLA Sharad Chauhan.
According to the police, Bharti instigated some of his supporters to misbehave with a woman. Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Nupur Prasad said he faces a case under section 109 (abetment) of the Indian Penal Code.
In her complaint, the woman working with an NGO said that she was manhandled by three men on the orders of Bharti a fortnight ago. It occurred when she went to attend an eid function, where Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was the chief guest.
The woman tried to talk to Kejriwal, but was stopped by security personnel. Within a few minutes, three men approached her and touched her inappropriately as they tried to push her away.
They also abused and threatened her.
The woman said that she saw Bharti instructing the three men to do so, said the police.Refuting the charges, Bharti said that the woman had tried to breach the security of the Chief Minister and the charges were baseless.“The CM's security was being breached which led to the police action. The charges against me are baseless and leveled at the behest of BJP,” Bharti said while speaking to media.
The woman later filed a complaint with Saket police station. The charges are under sections 323 (causing hurt), 354 (assault or criminal force to women with intent to outrage modesty), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture, or act intended to insult the modesty of woman) of the IPC. “We later added section 109 of IPC charging Bharti for abetment to the offence,” Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Prasad added.
Life threat
In another incident, a 35-year-old social worker claimed that she was abused by a youth outside Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan’s house in south east Delhi’s Jamia Nagar. An FIR under sections 506 and 509 of IPC has been registered with Jamia Nagar police station.
The woman, a resident of Jasola, said she had called Khan on his mobile phone on July 10 and later gone to his house to raise the issue of power cuts in the area.She claimed that Khan did not meet her and while she was returning, the youth came out of the house, and threatened to kill her if she did not stop politicising the matter.