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A local court here on Tuesday issued non-bailable warrants against former minister and BJP leader Anand Swaroop Shukla, and three others after they failed to appear before it in a nine-year-old case of attempted murder of a student leader.
The court also directed police to arrest the accused and produce them before it on December 19, said Dinesh Tiwari, counsel of student leader Sudhir Ojha. On Tuesday, the accused did not appear in the special MP/MLA court of Justice Hussain Ahmed Ansari after which the court issued the non-bailable (NBW) warrants against them for the third time. Another accused in the case, Avinash Singh, was arrested by the police recently.
The court had issued NBWs against the five accused, including the former minister, on December 2 and set the date of hearing on December 5 while rejecting the application for attendance waiver filed by them. On December 5, the court, rejecting the request to postpone the execution of the NBWs through an application submitted by Shukla, ordered the in-charge of Ballia city police station to arrest the accused and present them before the court while fixing December 13 for next hearing.
The special court, in its decision on November 22, has made the five accused punishable under sections 307 (assault with intent to kill) and 149 (unlawful crime committed by a public group) of the Indian Penal Code. Ojha had filed a case against the five for attempted murder with a knife on January 15, 2013 at Satish Chandra Mahavidyalaya in Kotwali area of Ballia city.
(With PTI inputs)
