Relief against sentence,not conviction, Amreli MP may face disqualification

Ahmedabad

Gujarat High Court has today gave relief against sentence to Amreli Lok Sabha seat MP Naranbhai Kachhadia given by sessions court in Amreli for Rs 10,000 bail bond but refused to reject the conviction.

This is relief for Kachhadia on one hand, but on the other hand as conviction has not been rejected by upper court, Kachhadia who is two-term MP from Amreli, might face disqualification under The Representation of The People Act as per the July 2013 judgement of the Supreme Court.

Background:

Amreli sessions court in Gujarat last week sentenced the BJP MP Naranbhai Kachhadia to three years’ imprisonment for assaulting a doctor at a government hospital on January 1, 2013. Judge D R Bhatt also imposed a fine of Rs 35,000 on him.

The court had stayed the sentence for a month so as to enable Kachhadia and other convicts to approach the High Court against the conviction.

The incident:

Kachhadia and others were accused of beating up Bhimjibhai Dabhi, a doctor at Amreli civil hospital, on January 1, 2013, for refusing to attend to a BJP worker’s relative.

Dabhi asked the patient to wait as he was tending to another person. The patient called up Kachhadia who came to the hospital and beat up Dabhi, apart from hurling casteist abuse. Dabhi belongs to a scheduled caste.

A case was registered under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the IPC.

The court had acquitted the MP of the charge under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, but awarded him three years’ imprisonment for `voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant doing his duty’, and `using force or violence through unlawful assembly’.

Four others — Kirit Bhamja, Madhu Joshi, Ravi Joshi and the MP’s driver were also sentenced to three years’ prison term.

– DeshGujarat