Lawyers smear face of UP builder accused in Rs 96-cr cash seizure case

Lawyers in Kanpur smeared the face of a builder, accused of stocking old currency notes to the tune of over Rs 96 crore, with black ink when he were produced in the court on Monday, police said.

The general secretary of the Bar Association tried to pacify the irate lawyers but they refused to retreat and also thrashed the builder's accomplices after smearing his face with black ink calling him a "traitor".

Police had requested policy custody remand of the 10 persons accused of amassing old currency notes. When they were brought to the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and were awaiting the verdict of the court, some lawyers went near the accused and smeared the face of builder Anand Khatri black.

When the other accused tried to react, the lawyers thrashed them. It was only after the intervention of Bar Association general secretary Bhanu Pratap Singh that the lawyers were pacified and the police whisked away the accused and who was later taken to jail.

Police had demanded police custody of the accused claiming that the phones that had been confiscated from them were locked and the police needed the custody to unlock them for further investigation.

Police also told the magistrate that the network of the accused was spread to some foreign countries and they need to be interrogated further, so they be given a seven-day custody of the accused.

The court granted two-hour police custody remand with some riders like presence of a lawyer with them and that they would be medically examined before and after the police custody.

After the two-hour police remand, accused Anand Khatri, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Sanjay Kumar, Anil Yadav, Sanjeev Agarwal, Manish Agarwal, Ali Hussain, Kuteshwar Rao, Mohit Dhingra and Santosh Kumar Yadav, Sant Kumar Yadav, Onkar, Santosh Pathak, Ramashray, Rajeshwari and Dhirendra Gupta are back in prison.

In a joint raid with the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Uttar Pradesh Police had recovered more than Rs 96 crore from Kanpur on January 16.

--IANS

md/nir