A Delhi court today discharged Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and AAP leader Kumar Vishwas in a case of allegedly defacing public property in 2013.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal granted the relief to Sisodia, Vishwas and one Mukesh Hudda, noting that the police had filed the charge sheet after a long delay of over a year and five months.
The investigating officer (IO) also did not mention in the final report any reason for the delay, the court noted.
"However, in a seperate application, he has stated that he had misplaced the file and when one fine day, he found that file in his box in other files, when he filed this charge sheet in the court.
"As far as this reason is concerned, this is mere negligence of the IO for which the accused should not be made to suffer with this prosecution," the court said.
The court also rejected the second ground mentioned by the IO as a reason for delay in filing the charge sheet, stating that accused Hudda was untracable.
The court noted there was nothing in the charge sheet that showed Hudda was absconding or concealing himself from the probe.
"Both the grounds mentioned by the IO are vague and shows his own negligence in filing the charge-sheet belatedly," the court said, adding it was not a fit case to condone the delay in filing the charge sheet.
"Therefore, in view of the aforesaid discussion, all the accused persons are discharged from the present case as the charge sheet filed by the investigation agency is beyond the period of limitation," the court said.
According to the FIR, the accused persons had put up posters of Aam Aadmi Party at the walls of a government school in Mansarovar Park area with a purpose to take political milage. The police had filed a charge sheet against the three accused persons in March 2015 for the incident which had allegedly occured in 2013.
If convicted, the accoused could have got a maximum punishment of one year jail term.
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