INDORE: An Indore sessions court on Tuesday rejected the bail application of Sadaqat Khan, co-accused in the Munawar Faruqui case.
The court of first additional sessions judge Yatindra Kumar Guru said that Khan couldn’t be granted regular bail on the basis of parity with the interim bail granted to Munawar by Supreme Court on February 4. Police had argued that if Khan were released on bail, it could lead to a “law and order situation, as in Ujjain recently”.
Khan, an engineer, was arrested on January 2 — a day after Munawar and four others — when he had gone to the district court where the others were being produced. A video of him being slapped by onlookers when in police custody had gone viral.
Khan has been booked on the same charges as the rest — IPC 295A, 298, 269, 188/34 — for insulting Hindu deities and hurting religious feelings.
Khan’s counsel Surendra Verma, submitted before the court that police had arrested him “without any investigation and with a political vendetta, relying on untrue facts”. He pointed out that Munawar had been granted ad-interim bail by SC, and that police had spared the owner of the café where the show was organised.