VK Jain, the adviser of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has issued a recorded statement to the Delhi police saying that he saw AAP MLAs beat up the Delhi’s Chief Secretary in Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia’s presence. In a statement made during a hearing at Delhi’s Tis Hazari court, the Delhi police’s counsel claimed that VK Jain (the prime witness) under section 161 of the CRPC has corroborated the Chief Secretary’s claim that he was assaulted by AAP MLAs Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal.
As per the News-18 report, Jain had gone to the washroom for a few minutes and after returning found Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal assaulting the Chief Secretary whose spectacles were lying on ground. In another explosive revelation, Jain is also supposed to have said that Kejriwal and Sisodia were in the same room as the Chief Secretary while he was being assaulted.
As explained in the above report, as a standard procedure in the event of a FIR, a party has to record two statements: one with the cops and one with the magistrate under section 161 and 164 of the CRPC respectively.
While the statement under section 161 has been given to the police, Jain is also reported to be in the process of giving the statement to the magistrate under the section 164 of the CRPC.
AAP’s lawyers in response have questioned the timing of this statement and asked why did the Delhi police not come up with this piece of information yesterday. They also point to the fact that Jain gave this statement to the police, and asked what he said to the magistrate under section 164.
It might spell doom for the accused and the AAP as a whole if the two statements corroborate.
Politically such a statement by Jain might be critical considering VK Jain’s close proximity to Kejriwal. As per rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra, Jain is one of the closest aides of Kejriwal and was handpicked by the AAP supremo.
If the charges are indeed proved then Kejriwal might have to deal with a ruinous narrative of “AAP MLA assaulted senior bureaucrat while Kejriwal did nothing to stop it. The accused MLAs were finally turned in by the Chief Minister’s close adviser”.
