himachal-hc-extends-anticipatory-bail-of-independent-mlas-ashish-rakesh-sharma

Himachal's High Court has extended Hamirpur's independent MLA Ashish Sharma and Rakesh Sharma's interim anticipatory bail on Monday. Ashish, now saffron party's nominee for Gagret Vidhan Sabha, along with Chetanya and 7 others, including 6 Congress dissenters and 3 independents, supported BJP's Harsh Mahajan in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. Subsequently, they all switched allegiance to the BJP.

 

Advocate General Anoop Rattan on Monday said that the High Court has extended the interim bail till April 26 and asked them to join the investigations and appear before the investigation officer whenever called. 

 

"We have mentioned in our status report that Rakesh Sharma, a retired bureaucrat, despite orders of the court did not join the investigations and threatened the investigation officer when asked to appear before the police," the advocate said. 

 

Rakesh Sharma is the father of Gagret MLA Chaitanya Sharma, who was booked by the police for electoral offences and criminal conspiracy till April 26.

 

Meanwhile, both the accused have filed a fresh application in the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR against them and the court has asked the state government to file its reply and posted the case for April 26, Rattan said. 

 

Shimla Police had last month registered a case against these two and other MLAs over "electoral offences", bribery, and criminal conspiracy related to the recent Rajya Sabha polls in which six Congress MLAs had voted for the BJP candidate from the state. 

 

The case against them was registered under sections 171 c and e (undue influence on elections and bribery) and 120 b (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and sections 7 and 8 (public servant taking undue advantage) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, based on a complaint lodged by Congress MLAs Sanjay Avasthi and Bhuvneshwar Gaur. 

 

In their complaint, the Congress legislators had alleged "horse trading and misuse of money to influence the elections" and criminal conspiracy and had sought investigation on charges of money trading, misuse of helicopter and security forces, and criminal misconduct.