No relief for former MLA Simarjit Bains in rape case; HC adjourns hearing

Tribune News Service

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, May 9

Former MLA Simarjeet Singh Bains today moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court for quashing/setting aside order dated April 12 declaring him a proclaimed offender in a rape case registered in July 2021 at Ludhiana.

Taking up a bunch of similar petitions by Bains and other petitioners, Justice Lisa Gill of the High Court simply adjourned the hearing to May 19 after senior counsel RS Rai with advocate Suneet Pal Singh Aulakh prayed for some time to address arguments in the matter.

Bains and other petitioners were also seeking directions to stay their arrest and permit them to furnish bail bonds before the illaqa magistrate. Directions were also sought to transfer the investigation to the CBI. Bains contended he was being falsely implicated in the FIR on the behest of political rivals. "The political opponents stooped very low in character and in order to attain political gains, they initiated false prosecution of the petitioner,” Rai contended.

The Bench was also told that the alleged proclamation was pasted at the petitioner' house on March 4. But in actual neither such publication was pasted, nor was any such proclamation “affected” on his house or in the area where he resided.

The Bench was further told the constable made a false statement before the Court that he pasted a copy of the proclamation outside his house. “In case any such proclamation would have been pasted outside the house of the petitioner, the political rivals would have tried to take advantage of it and definitely would have circulated its photographs and videos in the constituency," he added.

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