Court awards 6-month jail term to Ram Niwas Goel for house-trespass

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel was on Friday awarded six-month jail term by a court here for trespassing on the house of a realtor in an East Delhi colony in 2015. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal held Goel and four others -- Sumit Goyal, Hitesh Khanna, Atul Gupta, and Balbir Singh -- guilty, saying the case against them was proved beyond reasonable doubts. "I am of the view that the punishment needs to be deterrent in this case," the court said while handing over simple imprisonment for a period of six months and a fine of Rs 1,000 each.

The court, however, granted them bail on a personal bond of Rs 1,00,000 to enable them to file an appeal before higher courts against the order of their conviction and the jail term. The court had convicted the accused persons for the offense punishable under section 448 (house-trespass) of the IPC. Seventy-two-year-old Goel, through advocate Mhd Irshad, had denied the allegations in the case.

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According to an FIR registered on a complaint by builder Manish Ghai, Goel and his supporters had raided one of Ghai's houses in Vivek Vihar on the night of February 6, 2015, a day before the Delhi Assembly elections. Goel had allegedly raided the house of Ghai accusing him of stashing liquor, blankets and other things for distribution ahead of the polls, the FIR had said. The AAP members had refuted these claims, saying they had gone to the house with a police team comprising the local station house officer and assistant commissioner of police, among others after making a PCR call in this regard.

"As per the complainant, some labourers were staying at a house that was owned by him. He received a call from one of them at about 9.30 pm on February 6, 2015, about Goel and his associates forcibly entering the building and damaging the property," the police had said in the charge sheet. Ghai also alleged that the group broke a cupboard, drawers, kitchen items, windowpanes and mirrors in the house. When the labourers tried to resist, they were allegedly physically assaulted. A case of rioting, trespassing, causing mischief and voluntarily causing hurt was lodged against the accused. 

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