Verify complaint against Kejriwal, Goa court tells complainant

A Goa trial court on Thursday directed a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, who was a former Returning Officer during the February 2017 state assembly polls, to verify his complaint filed against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for exhorting voters to accept money from rival parties, but to vote for his AAP.

In a one-line order, Judicial Magistrate First Class Shantashri Sinai Kudchadkar directed the complainant, Sub-Divisional Magistrate Gurudas Dessai, to verify the contents of his complaint made before the police against Kejriwal in January last year.

The next hearing is scheduled on March 1.

The complaint was initially filed as a non-cognisable offence at the Mapusa police station in North Goa district by Dessai, shortly after Kejriwal in his four speeches delivered during election campaign rallies in Goa on January 8, 2017, had exhorted voters to accept money from rival political parties, but vote for his Aam Aadmi Party instead.

After nearly a year of being registered as a non-cognisable offence, state poll officials in December 2017 suddenly moved the trial court at Mapusa to issue directions to the state police to register the offence as a FIR under sections 171 B (inducement) and 171 E (bribery) of the Indian Penal Code.

--IANS

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