Chandigarh: Punjab’s Malerkotla district court on Saturday sentenced Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Delhi’s Mehrauli, Naresh Yadav, to two-year jail in a 2016 Quran sacrilege case of Malerkotla.
Yadav has been sent to Malerkotla jail after the court of additional district and sessions judge Parminder Singh Grewal convicted Yadav in the said case on Friday and pronounced the verdict on Saturday. A fine of Rs 11,000 was also imposed on Yadav.
The case pertains to an incident when some torn pages of Quran were found in Malerkotla in June, 2016, which whipped upon some incidents of violence in the town following which a case was registered by police against Vijay Kumar, Gaurav Kumar and Nand Kishore. The police also added the name of Naresh Yadav in the case on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
Yadav was arrested in July 2016 under the charges of conspiring to incite social unrest, but he was acquitted by a lower court due to lack of evidence.
However, following Yadav’s acquittal, Mohammad Ashraf, a resident of Malerkotla filed an appeal against the decision in the additional sessions court of Sangrur (now Malerkotla) in April 2021 which led to a renewed scrutiny of the case and finally leading to Yadav’s conviction. It was alleged that the conspiracy for the sacrilege was planned at Yadav’s address.
OPPN TAKES ON AAP
Meanwhile, the opposition parties, Congress and BJP tore into the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accusing it of fuelling communal clashes in the state.
Senior Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa, who is also the leader of opposition (LoP) said that the AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal promised justice in sacrilege cases but his own MLA Naresh Yadav has been convicted in the Quran sacrilege case. He went on to allege that AAP which claimed the moral high ground stands exposed as instead of healing Punjab, they have fuelled unrest.
The BJP leaders also hit out at the AAP alleging that AAP’s true face had been exposed and Kejriwal and chief minister Bhagwant Mann must answer for their lies and divisive politics.
Meanwhile, Yadav has rebutted the charges saying that it was a false case against him to tarnish the image of his party.
