Lucknow: The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court (HC) has permitted the withdrawal of a criminal case lodged against Uttar Pradesh Minister of State for Health, Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh in 2007 for an alleged attempt to murder and other charges.
The court said that once the state government expressed disclination to prosecute him and moved an application for withdrawal of the case before the trial court, and the victim also did not have any objection to it, so putting the Minister on trial would be a futile exercise.
A bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh passed the order on the revision petition filed by the state government, challenging the special MP/MLA court's order of October 14, 2020, whereby it had refused to allow withdrawal of the prosecution against the Minister.
Allowing the revision plea, the bench observed, "When the complainant (victim) himself is not supporting the prosecution case, this court is of the view that there is no chance of conviction of the accused in the case. The case has remained pending since 2007 and continuance of trial would be nothing but a futile exercise."
An FIR was lodged against the Minister and 20 others on May 4, 2007, with Mohanganj police station in Raebareli under sections 147, 148, 149, 307, 436, 397, 395, 323, 504, 506, 427 of the IPC and section 2(3) of the UP Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act.
It was alleged that Mayankeshwar, who was contesting the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on an Samajwadi Party ticket, along with his 20 supporters attacked the house of a supporter of Dinesh Pratap Singh, who was the Bahujan Samaj Party candidate, and manhandled his family and set valuable materials on fire.
The police filed the charge-sheet where upon the trial court took cognisance of the offences on July 13, 2007. Later, the state government decided to withdraw the prosecution and moved an application in the special MP/MLA court in 2019, alleging that the case was lodged due to political reasons as Dinesh Pratap Singh himself was present in the police station at the time of registering the FIR. —PTI