A court here on Friday rejected bail application of Choudhary Rajinder Singh, brother of senior BJP leader, Choudhary Lal Singh, days after the arrest warrant was issued against him by CJM Kathua, in connection with a case filed against him by police for using abusive language against Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.
Advocate Kirty Bushan, the counsel of the accused Rajinder Singh alias Bobby, had filed the bail application on behalf of the accused. While defending Singh, his counsel said that it was not the Mehbooba, the Chief Minister of the state and that Mehbooba he was shouting in the rally was someone else. "It is not a serious offence thus bail should be granted in favour of him," he submitted. However, he was contested by the government advocate Bharat Bushan Sharma by saying that on the day Rajinder took out a rally and shouted anti-Mehbooba slogans and asked the rally was against whom? The rally, Sharma said was against the government, and the government is headed by Mehbooba Mufti. “Thus he was abusing the Chief Minister of the state.”
After hearing both the parties, sessions Judge Kathua, Sanjeev Gupta, rejected the bail plea. On May 30, the warrant was issued by Kathua Chief Judicial Magistrate A.S. Langeh after the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Hiranagar Police Station filed an application in the court accusing Rajinder of evading arrest and changing his hideouts in Jammu and Udhampur in J&K and Pathankot in Punjab, police had said.
A case under Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) and Section 66A of the Information Technology Act has been registered against the absconding accused. Rajinder Singh, brother of ex-Forest Minister Choudhary Lal Singh, was booked by the police on May 21 after a 26-second video clip, showing him perched atop a vehicle and abusing Mehbooba as his supporters cheered him, had gone viral. Choudhary Lal Singh had to resign from the state cabinet for attending a rally organized by Hindu Ekta Manch in support of the accused in Kathua rape and murder.