New Delhi: Pawan Khera’s custodial interrogation is “necessary” to find out about his associates who collected the documents claiming that Assam chief minister’s wife holds multiple passports, opined the Gauhati High Court Friday while rejecting the Congress spokesperson’s anticipatory bail application.
The Assam Police told the court that Khera has relied upon some documents to make those charges and claimed he had them in his possession. It also submitted that they have “already detected that those documents are false” and, therefore, Khera “is guilty of committing the offence under Section 339 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which involves possessing a forged document or electronic record, knowing it’s forged and is intending to use it fraudulently as genuine.
This argument about Section 339 “seems to have force in it”, and the accusations brought against Khera appear “to stem from motive of furthering the ends of justice,” Justice Parthivjyoti Saikia said.
This case, the judge said, cannot be termed as a case of defamation simply as “there are materials for a prima facie case under Section 339 of the BNS and the petitioner has been avoiding police investigation.”
“There are no materials to suggest that the accusations brought against the present petitioner are intended to injure and humiliate the applicant/petitioner by having him arrested.”
Riniki Bhuyan Sarma’s husband is in politics and is the Chief Minister of Assam but she herself is not in politics, the HC said.
“If Mr. Khera had raised those accusations against the Chief Minister, then the matter would have been a political rhetoric. But in order to gain political mileage, Mr. Khera has dragged an innocent lady into the controversy,” it said, noting that Khera has not yet proved beyond doubt that Riniki has passports of three other countries and that she had opened a company in the US and invested a huge amount of money.
Marred by twists and turns, the politico-judicial row started on 5 April, when Khera, during a press conference in Guwahati, claimed that Riniki, the wife of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, holds passports of Egypt, the UAE and Antigua & Barbuda. He also claimed that Riniki floated a company at Wyoming, the US and also invested more than Rs 50,000 crore. In order to make those claims, Khera had shown different documents, which he claimed, were collected by his associates.
In an FIR with charges of criminal conspiracy, forgery, defamation, and making false statements regarding an election, Riniki said that she is an Indian citizen and she does not hold any passport of any other countries nor has she floated the company in the US.
Khera filed a transitory anticipatory bail plea in Telangana High Court, which granted him a week-long transit anticipatory bail on 10 April. Five days on, the Supreme Court stayed the transit anticipatory bail, noting that Khera submitted a “forged document”—by way of submitting the front side of his Aadhaar card and the reverse side of his wife’s Aadhaar—to secure bail for a case registered in Assam.
Two days later, the apex court again refused protection from arrest for Khera, asking him to approach an appropriate court in Assam.
Representing Khera in the Gauhati HC, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi had noted that the press conference was held right before the Assam elections. Since Riniki Bhuyan Sarma’s husband belongs to the BJP and Khera belongs to the Congress, he said, whatever Khera had done was nothing but “a political rhetoric aimed at the opposite party” and at best, it might be a case of defamation.
(Edited by Tony Rai)