UP to witness mini Assembly poll after Lok Sabha elections
Uttar Pradesh is set for a mini assembly election after the Lok Sabha polls are over as around 15 legislators are contesting the parliamentary elections.
Former MP Dhananjay Singh, the accused in a four-year-old case of kidnapping Namami Gange project manager Abhinav Singhal, demanding extortion at gunpoint and abusing and threatening him, has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
Along with Dhananjay, his accomplice, Santosh Vikram Singh, was given the same punishment. The duo has been sentenced under 5 IPC sections: 364, 386, 120B, 504 and 506.
Dhananjay, who had announced his candidature for the Lok Sabha polls from Jaunpur, will not be able to do so till a higher court stays the punishment.
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On Tuesday, the court of Additional Sessions Judge IV/(MP-MLA) Sharad Kumar Tripathi held both the accused guilty of kidnapping and extortion. Today, the court announced the quantum of punishment.
A resident of Muzaffarnagar, Abhinav Singhal, had lodged an FIR against Dhananjay Singh and his partner Vikram under various sections for kidnapping, extortion, and other criminal acts at the Line Bazar Police Station on May 10, 2020.
The complaint was that on Sunday evening, Dhananjay Singh, along with his associate Vikram Singh and two persons, reached the site located at Pachatiya and kidnapped the plaintiff in a Fortuner. They took him to Mohalla Kalikutty, the residence of the former MP, where Dhananjay Singh came with a pistol and started abusing and pressurising the plaintiff’s firm to supply low-quality material.
When the plaintiff refused to oblige him, the accused threatened with a demand for extortion money. Somehow, the plaintiff managed to escape from the clutches of the accused reached the Line Bazaar police station and demanded action against him.
Soon after, the police arrested the former MP from his residence and presented him in court the next day. The court sent him to judicial custody declining to entertain his bail plea. He, however, got bail from the high court later.
While going to jail, Dhananjay had alleged that a minister and the superintendent of police had conspired to implicate him in the case.
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