Kejriwal gets exemption from appearance before Mumbai court

The Kurla magistrate's court here today granted permanent exemption from appearance to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who is facing a case for holding a rally in Mumbai without required permissions.
Magistrate Richa Khedekar, however, directed Kejriwal to appear on January 20 for furnishing a bail bond.
A complaint was lodged against the AAP leader in March this year for holding a rally in suburban Mankhurd without prior permission from the traffic police.
Kejriwal approached the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and exemption from appearing before the Kurla metropolitan magistrate.
The complainant alleged documents showing purchase of
material were "concocted and forged", and a loss of over Rs 10 crore had been caused to the public exchequer.

They demanded that the role of the Chief Minister be investigated as he had allegedly caused substantive gains to Bansal and others by using his influence.

It also sought prosecution of P K Kathuria, the then executive engineer in PWD, claiming he had connived with other government officials and abused his position to obtain "huge money" for himself, Bansal and others.
The complainants alleged that Bansal operated through several dummy firms to obtain government contracts with the connivance of several senior officials of PWD. These contracts never got executed "whereas shockingly all the payments were cleared under the pressure of Kejriwal".

Besides lodging of FIR, the complainants also sought the court's direction to send for a status report from the police, monitoring of the probe and a status report from CBI on a complaint given to it on January 9.