Court rejects Chandra Mohan’s bail

Vadodara: A local court on Friday rejected the bail application of Chandra Mohan, the former student of M S University’s fine arts faculty, who had set the head office of the university on fire on February 3. The cops had booked Chandra Mohan under the stringent IPC sections like attempt to murder and damaging public property after he sprinkled petrol and set on fire the chambers near the university vice-chancellor’s office. The cops argued that if Chandra Mohan, who lives in another state, is given bail he may not appear regularly during the trial and it will affect the case. Also, the police told the court that there are possibilities that he may try to influence the case if he gets out on bail. “We will now approach the Gujarat high court and file a bail application,” said Chandra Mohan’s lawyer, Chetan Parmar. Chandra Mohan, a native of Madan Pally village of Andhra Pradesh’s Warangal district had visited the university head office to meet vice-chancellor, professor Parimal Vyas for making a representation against the delay in declaration of his final results. He had been waiting for his results for last 11 years. His results were withheld after he got involved in an obscenity row that had hit the university’s famed fine arts faculty. Niraj Jain, who was then with the BJP, had entered the faculty premises and objected to paintings of final year student of masters in visual arts, Chandra Mohan who had made paintings of gods and goddesses as part of his final year evaluation work. Chandra Mohan told the police that had set the office in MSU headquarters on fire as he was frustrated with the delay in declaration of the final year results. When he was told that the MSU VC was away, Chandra Mohan took a paper to write an application. Minutes later he showed a fake gun to Jaykumar Nair, personal assistant of the VC, and then poured petrol in the waiting room area before setting it on fire. When Nair tried to stop him, Chandra Mohan even poured petrol on him. The fire caused panic in the headquarters and the entire building was evacuated.