Midnight raid: Ex-minister Bharti seeks FIR against 'erring' cops

Delhi's former law minister Somnath Bharti Monday filed a plea seeking further investigation and registration of a first information report against erring officials, accusing them of bias in the probe into the Jan 16 midnight raid on a Delhi house.

Bharti has also claimed Rs. 250 crore in compensation from the erring police officials for damaging his reputation and his political career.

Bharti and 17 others were chargesheeted under 16 sections of the Indian Penal Code, including outraging the modesty of women in the case Sep 29.

Bharti appeared personally in the court with his defence counsel Deepak Khosla.

"Police have wilfully, mischievously and with malafide intent in order to embroil the applicant in criminal trial at the cost of his political career suppressed from the court vital facts relating to the matter," AAP leader Bharati said.

In his application, he alleged that the investigating officer has failed to investigate the matter properly even though he fully knows that no offence is made out.

He added that he has been falsely implicated and said that if the matter had been properly and fairly investigated by a competent and unbiased officer, then the full truth would have been unearthed.

Metropolitan Magistrate Niti Phutela sent his application seeking for registration of a FIR against police officials to the chief metropolitan magistrate for delivering the appropriate order Tuesday.

However, she asked police to file reply to the plea for seeking further investigation in the case within a month and listed further hearing on Bharti's plea for Jan 16 next year.

Meanwhile the court, which was scheduled to pass its order on consideration of chargesheet Monday, ordered that it will not proceed in the matter till it received proper sanction from the government to initiate proceedings against Bharti.

The police told the court that it will file a supplementary chargesheet in the case with sanction received by the government.

The chargesheet was filed by police Sep 29. In the over 100-page document, police have cited around 41 prosecution witnesses, including nine African women, to buttress the charges.

Police lodged a first information report Jan 19 against "unknown accused" on the court's direction and booked them for various charges dealing with wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and act intended to insult the modesty of a woman.

The court order came on a plea by a Ugandan woman who sought registration of an FIR against unknown people for creating a ruckus during the raid between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. in Khirki Extension here Jan 16 this year.

Advocate Rakesh Sherawat, appearing for the Ugandan woman, told the court that his client learnt through the media that the people taking part in the midnight raid were from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by Delhi's then law minister Bharti. However, Bharti was not named in the complaint.

The minister had raided a house in Khirki Extension after receiving complaints about an alleged prostitution and drug racket in the area.