NAINITAL: Days after the BJP MLA from Haridwar’s Jawalapur constituency was booked for raping a woman party worker, the legislator has now approached the Uttarakhand high court (HC) seeking quashing of the
FIR
and protection from arrest.
While an application was earlier filed by accused
MLA Suresh Rathore
under section 482 of the CrPC, asking the court to stay the directions of the magistrate court and not to allow the registration of the FIR, a writ petition has now been filed since the FIR has already been registered and the probe has begun.
“By the time the application could be heard, an FIR was already registered. Therefore, the application has now become infructuous,” said
Aditya Pratap Singh, counsel for Rathore.
The application had come up for hearing before the bench of
Justice
NS Dhanik on Monday, however, after he was informed that the FIR had already been registered, the judge allowed the petitioners to withdraw the application. “Our application was listed for hearing on Monday but we withdrew it as it became infructuous. A petition has now been filed by us and it will come up for hearing in a few days,” Singh said.
In his petition, Rathore has argued that the magistrate did not even consider the criminal history of the complainant and the fact that the woman and her husband were behind bars for almost a month after he approached the police with the complaint that they were trying to extort money from him.
The woman, however, had alleged that she met Rathore two-and-a-half years ago when he asked her to join the party’s women’s wing. However, a few months back, he raped her and even threatened her with dire consequences if she revealed the 'crime' to anyone. Later, the woman approached the local court which directed the police to register an FIR. Subsequently, the Haridwar police registered the FIR at Bahadrabad police station on Friday under section 376 of the Indian Penal Code.
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