Delhi: Saket Court dismisses bail plea of former MLA Asif Mohd Khan

New Delhi [India], January 29 : The Saket Court of Delhi has dismissed the bail petition of former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan, arrested recently for allegedly misbehaving with the police in southeast Delhi's Shaheen Bagh area.
Additional Sessions Judge Sonu Agnihotri while passing the order on Saturday said, "If law enforcers are attacked /abused and accused are released on bail, it will send wrong signal in society. To my mind, in these circumstances, bail application of accused Asif Mohammad Khan does not deserve to be allowed and is accordingly dismissed."
The court further said, "I am of the view that as per averments in FIR, accused stopped way of complainant Ct. Dharampal while he was going from place of occurrence without his consent, threatened him, used objectionable words and tried to incite public at large and hence can be said to have used criminal force against complainant squarely bringing act of accused within purview of Section 353 IPC."
During the course of arguments, videos of the accused concerning the present case and earlier cases were played before the court by the Investigation Officer on his mobile and laptop. These videos were also shown to counsels for the accused.
After seeing the videos, the court noted that the conduct of the accused as is coming in the videos shown to the court prima facie shows that the accused has no respect for the law of the land and he considered himself to be above law.
"The manner in which he is seen speaking with police officials is depreciable. Whatever cause may be available to a person against Government Officials, he is not expected to take law unto in his own hands and misbehave and mishandle Government Officials who are discharging their official duties," the court said.
The lawyer of the Delhi Police opposing the bail plea said the conduct of the accused has been consistent in attacking Government officials on duty and as many as three recent cases including the present one concerning obstruction of public servants in discharge of their official duties are pending against the accused.
Lawyers who appeared for Asif Mohammad during arguements submitted that a false case was lodged against the accused in order to detain him in custody as the accused takes up social issues against police and the police has been adamant about keeping the accused in custody on the pretext of one or the other.
It was submitted that prima facie no offence under section 353 of the Indian Penal Code has been made out against the accused as for offence under the said section, assault or use of criminal force is a must which is absent in facts and circumstances of the present case.
The counsels of the accused also submitted that the accused is in custody in the present case for more than the last three weeks. It was also submitted that data of pending cases filed by police with the reply to the bail application of the accused is not correct and that only three cases at present are pending against him and in rest of the cases, the accused has either been acquitted or discharged.
During the hearing, the Court noted that the wrong involvement or non-updated involvement report of the accused has been filed before this court by the Delhi Police. Noted this the court issued a show cause notice to Investigation Officer and SHO PS Shaheen Bagh under section 177 of IPC to show cause as to why they should not be convicted and punished for furnishing false information to the court regarding the previous involvement of the accused through DCP, South-East for February 10.