Kanpur Samajwadi Party MLA gets a breather from High Court, which directs lower court to grant him bail,nif he applies for the same:
In a big relief to SP MLA from Kanpur-Amitabh Bajpai, the Allahabad High court has directed the trial court to grant interim bail to Bajpai if he files a bail application in a 2021 criminal intimidation case.
The court further directed the trial court to decide his discharge application in the case within two months and clarified that the interim bail will end after the disposal of the application.
Justice Rajeev Misra passed the order while disposing of a petition filed by Amitabh Bajpai challenging the charge sheet as well as summoning order dated December 15, 2023 passed by additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM)-I, Kanpur Nagar.
According to applicant’s counsel, during investigation no evidence was found against Bajpai still charge sheet was filed against him.
On this, government advocate argued that in such a case the remedy before the applicant was to file a discharge application before trial court and not to approach the high court through present petition.
On this court observed, “Accordingly this application is disposed of finally with a direction to the applicant to approach court below by filing a discharge application in terms of Section 239 criminal procedure code (CrPC) seeking his discharge in above mentioned criminal case.”
However, the court said, “It goes without saying that till the disposal of the discharge application as directed above, the court below shall not proceed further with the matter.”
At this point applicant counsel informed the court that Bajpai had not before court till date and in order to file a discharge application he needed to surrender before the trial court.
Then the high court in its order dated August 9 directed the trial court to grant interim bail to Bajpai in case he appears before trial court, to move a discharge application, and files a bail application and decide his discharge application within two months.
to recall that an FIR was lodged by one project director of NHAI in 2021 in Bithoor police station of Kanpur Nagar alleging that MLA had abused him and threatened to attack him by releasing a video on social media.
