AAP MLA Som Dutt taken into custody in assault case after court denies relief

AAP MLA Som Dutt was on Thursday taken into custody to serve a six-month jail term for assaulting a man with a base ball bat during campaigning for 2015 Assembly elections after a Delhi court dismissed his appeal against the sentence.

Special Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar rejected the application filed by the AAP leader, saying there was no sufficient ground to interfere with the order passed by a magisterial court, his advocate Mohd Irshad said.

Irshad had challenged the magisterial court order, saying the trial court judge erred in holding the politician guilty in the case.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal had on July 4 given six-month jail term to Dutt and also imposed a penalty of Rs 2 lakh on him, while noting that he was a Member of Legislative Assembly of Delhi before the incident and contesting the upcoming assembly elections.

It means he is public representative and he has committed the offence knowing its gravity and consequences, the trial court had said.

It noted that the incident did not take place on the spur of the moment but was a premeditated assault by a base ball bat.

The court, however, had granted him bail on a personal and surety bond of Rs 10,000 till August 5, 2019 for appealing against the conviction.

Dutt, the legislator from the Sadar Bazar constituency, was held guilty under sections 325 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt without provocation), 341 (wrongful restraint), 147 (rioting) and 149 (unlawful assembly ) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

"There is no doubt that on January 10, 2015 at around 8 pm, Som Dutt, along with his 50 supporters, went to flat No. 13 where the complainant was present. The complainant was beaten and assaulted by the accused and his associates due to which he suffered grievous injury," the court said while convicting Dutt.

An FIR was lodged against Dutt in 2015 at the Gulabi Bagh police station in north Delhi on the allegations that he allegedly had hit the complainant in his legs with a baseball bat and his supporters dragged him out on the road and started beating him, causing grievous injury.