After a year, Munna Yadav gets regular bail

Nagpur: In a relief to senior BJP leader Omprakash alias Munna Yadav, a close aid of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the sessions’ court here granted him regular bail on Thursday after he formally surrendered during the hearing.
Second chief judicial magistrate (CJM) AN Dhuldhule directed him to submit two solvent sureties of Rs25,000 each with the court for getting bail. Earlier, both sessions and Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court had rejected his bail applications.

Yadav had approached the Supreme Court on August 9 and it had asked him to surrender. While denying any relief to him, the SC division bench comprising justices Joseph Kurian and Sanjay Paul clarified that since the charge sheet was already filed in the case, the petitioner should approach the additional judicial magistrate for seeking a regular bail.

Accordingly, Yadav, recently re-nominated as the chairman of Maharashtra State Construction Workers’ Welfare Board (MSCWWB), through his counsels Uday Dable, Prakash Jaiswal and Nishant Singhania, moved the CJM’s court for regular bail.

Earlier, he had managed to secure ad-interim bail from the apex court on April 23, after which he returned to the city. Till then, he was absconding for nearly six months.

Munna and his family, including his wife Lakshmi, and sons — Karan and Arjun — was booked for attacking and seriously injuring Mangal Yadav, his sister Manju, brothers — Papa and Gabbar Yadav, and others, on October 21 last year over a dispute on bursting firecrackers.

They were attacked with swords, iron rods, sticks and bricks, which left them seriously injured and in hospital. The Dhantoli cops had earlier brandished Yadav’s family as “known criminals” in their affidavit before the court.

Subsequently, his entire family was initially booked for offences under Sections 324, 325, 147, 148 and 149 of IPC, besides 307, for attempt to murder, before dropping last offence and replacing it with Section 326. The charge sheet was filed in the case on March 1 this year.

Opposing Yadav’s bail plea, the crime branch informed that from the spot of incident, hockey stick, stones, and bamboo sticks were seized and statements of witnesses were recorded. During the course of investigation, iron sword came to be seized from one of the accused Jaggu (Avdesh Nanku Yadav), which was alleged to be used by the Yadav in assaulting Satya Prakash.