Court discharges AAP MLA in case of seizure of liquor

A Delhi court today discharged Aam Aadmi Party MLA Naresh Balyan in a case related to the alleged seizure of about 6,000 liquor bottles from a warehouse near his home in January 2015 during the assembly election campaign.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal granted the relief to the politician, saying there was no enough evidence to put him on trial.

According to the prosecution, in a joint operation, the Election Commission (EC) and the Delhi Police officials had seized 5,964 bottles (4,473 litres) of illicit liquor from a godown allegedly owned by Balyan, in Uttam Nagar's Om Vihar area on January 31, when model code of conduct was enforced for the Delhi assembly elections.

The bottles had labels "for sale in Haryana" and the police had initially registered a case against unidentified people and started a probe, it said. The prosecution said that the liquor was brought to Delhi from Haryana's Bahadurgarh.