Digvijaya Singh awarded one-year jail term in case of clash with BJYM workers, gets bail

The court later granted bail to all the convicts on a surety of ₹25,000 each. Judge Mukesh Nath convicted Singh and former Ujjain MP Premchand Guddu under Indian Penal Code sections 325 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 109 (abetment to assault).

A court in Indore district of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday sentenced six people including Congress leader Digvijaya Singh to one year's rigorous imprisonment in a case related to a clash with protesting workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in 2011.

 Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. (PTI)

The court later granted bail to all the convicts on a surety of ₹25,000 each. Judge Mukesh Nath convicted Singh and former Ujjain MP Premchand Guddu under Indian Penal Code sections 325 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 109 (abetment to assault). Anant Narayan, Jaisingh Darbar, Aslam Lala and Dilip Chaudhary were convicted under IPC section 325. Mahesh Parmar (Congress MLA from Tarana), Mukesh Bhati and Hemant Chauhan were acquitted for lack of evidence.

The court also imposed a fine of ₹5,000 each on the convicts. After getting bail, Singh told reporters that he will appeal against the conviction. "My name was not even mentioned as accused in the original FIR. Police added my name to the list of accused under political pressure later," he alleged. Rahul Sharma, the lawyer of Singh and Guddu, said they were accused of instigating others to beat up BJYM activist Ritesh Khabia. "Prosecution documents show Khabia had injury to the right hand, but the fact is he had a broken bone in his left hand," he said.

According to police, BJYM activists tried to show black flags to Singh on July 17, 2011, when his convoy was passing through Jiwajiganj area of Ujjain, which led to a clash.