Congress threatens to sue Punjab CM Mann for defamation over Ansari's jail stay row

'It has become his (Mann) habit of indulging character assassination,' Randhawa said.

Congress leader Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa on Monday threatened to file a defamation case against Bhagwant Mann for "character assassination", a day after the Punjab chief minister spoke of recovering Rs 55 lakh spent on holding gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari in a state jail.

Randhawa also contested the amount of Rs 55 lakh as claimed by the CM, stating that the actual fee of a senior advocate in the Ansari matter was Rs 17.60 lakh and also dared Mann to issue him a recovery notice.

Mann on Sunday said he would recover the amount of Rs 55 lakh legal fee for keeping Ansari in jail during the previous Congress government from Amarinder Singh and Sukhjinder Randhawa.

Mann had also said if Singh, who is now a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, and Randhawa, a Congress MLA, do not give the money, then their pension and other benefits will be stopped.

Meanwhile, Mann shared a "file noting" on his Twitter handle according to which the money spent on engaging the advocate in defending Ansari be recovered equally from former chief minister Amarinder Singh and former jail minister Randhawa.

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Addressing the media here on Monday, Randhawa slammed Mann for his statement on recovering money from him and Singh and said the jail department was not the petitioner but the respondent in the Ansari case.

He said senior advocate Dushyant Dave was hired in the Ansari matter but claimed that he had no role in engaging him. Randhawa said the fee of the advocate was Rs 17.60 lakh and that Mann's claim of Rs 55 lakh spent on legal fees was false.

"It has become his (Mann) habit of indulging character assassination… I will file a defamation case against him and I will ask him to prove (his charge)...our families spent all of their lives in politics. I will not tolerate such humiliation,” he said.

"I will approach the court. I challenge him to send me the recovery notice,” he added.

Ansari was in the Rupnagar Jail from January 2019 to April 2021 in an extortion case registered in Mohali, before the Supreme Court directed the Punjab government to give the gangster-turned-politician's custody to the Uttar Pradesh Police.

The apex court had also noted that the custody was being denied to the Uttar Pradesh Police on trivial grounds under the guise of medical issues. Ansari was subsequently moved to a jail in Banda in Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, Mann shared the July 1 file noting in which it was stated that engaging Dave for defending Ansari was not required as no public interest or the interest of the state of Punjab was involved in that case.

So the public money of the state of Punjab cannot be utilised for meeting out such expenditure, it said.

The expenditure so incurred may be recovered equally from Randhawa and Singh as they had proposed and approved respectively to engage Dave as an advocate, it read.

While hearing the Uttar Pradesh government's plea seeking custody of Ansari in March 2021, the Supreme Court had noted that the former MLA from Mau was involved in several cases of attempt to murder, murder, cheating and conspiracy apart from offences under the Gangsters Act lodged in Uttar Pradesh.

The court was also informed by the Uttar Pradesh government that between February 14, 2019, and February 14, 2020, Ansari's custody was denied to the state police by the Punjab jail authorities 26 times mainly on medical grounds referring to diabetes mellitus, skin allergy, hypertension, backache and throat infection.