Bhagalpur clashes: Court rejects union minister's son bail plea

The bail petition of Arjit Shashwat, son of Union Minister Ashwini Choubey, was rejected on Tuesday.

Shashwat, charged with communal violence in Bhagalpur last month, was arrested on Saturday midnight from Patna's Mahavir Mandir in a dramatic manner. He was taken to Bhagalpur on Sunday and produced before the court which remanded him to judicial custody for 14 days.

On Tuesday, a bail plea was moved in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Anjani Kumar Srivastava who rejected Sashwat's petition.

Shashwat, son of Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey, had been booked by the Bhagalpur police (Case No 176/18) on March 17 on the charge of vitiating communal harmony during the Hindu New Year's celebration. He had been charged with taking out procession without the permission of police and raising provocative slogans in sensitive zones of Bhagalpur which led to communal flare-up, thereby resulting in stone-pelting incidents in the district. Some cops also sustained injuries in the violence.

Evading arrest for a fortnight, he was eventually apprehended when relations between the ruling alliance partners – the JD (U) and the BJP - nosedived over the issue.

Shashwat had contested the 2015 Bihar Assembly polls from his father's erstwhile constituency Bhagalpur but lost to Congress' Ajit Sharma.

Meanwhile, the Bhagalpur police appealed to the court to issue orders for attachment of property of 20 other absconders who were named accused in the same case.