Delhi court dismisses bail plea of alleged middleman in EC bribery case

A Delhi court has dismissed a bail plea of an alleged middleman in the Election Commission bribery case involving AIADMK (Amma) faction leader T T V Dhinakaran.

Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj rejected the bail plea of Sukesh Chandrashekhar, who was arrested on April 16, 2017, saying he was not entitled to relief at this stage as charges have already been framed against him.

The court noted that Chandrashekhar was the one who led the other accused to "garden path" assuring favourable decision to them by the Election Commission in getting 'Two Leaves' election symbol of AIADMK for the party faction led by V K Sasikala.

"The other three accused were persuaded to conspire with present applicant/accused in the conspiracy to bribe the public servants. The present applicant is the one who started the whole conspiracy alleged against all the accused.

"Considering the punishment punishable to present applicant/accused and punishment punishable to the other accused and also considering the role played by this applicant and the role played by the other co-accused, this is very clear that there is no parity between present applicant and the other co-accused in this case," the court said.

It also noted that the accused had got a fake identity card of Member of Parliament pasted on his car.

"This is reminiscent of the 'Parliament Attack Case'. In that case also, the accused had used a vehicle purportedly to be of Defence Ministry for seeking entrance in the precincts of the parliament. This fact further aggravates the case against present applicant/accused and persuades this court not to enlarge the applicant/accused on bail as by using a fake identity card," it said.

The police had accused Chandrashekhar, Dhinakaran and others of hatching a criminal conspiracy to bribe some Election Commission officials.

The Delhi Police had on December 14, 2017 filed a supplementary charge sheet against Dhinakaran, Chandrashekhar and seven others in the matter.

In its 701-page charge sheet filed on July 14, 2017 the police had claimed that money recovered from Chandrashekar was sent by Dhinakaran through unaccounted channels with the help of other accused persons.

Chandrashekhar was named in the charge sheet for alleged offences of forgery of valuable security, forgery for the purpose of cheating, making a false document and criminal conspiracy under the IPC and provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.

Dhinakaran was accused of trying to bribe EC officials to get the "two leaves" poll symbol for the AIADMK faction led by V K Sasikala.