UP minister Rakesh Sachan sentenced to 1 year in jail under Arms Act, gets bail

UP minister Rakesh Sachan, who has described the Arms Act case against him as bogus, said he will file an appeal against his conviction

Kanpur: Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Rakesh Sachan was sentenced to one-year imprisonment in a 31-year-old case for possession of a rifle without an arms licence in Kanpur’s Naubasta area and released on ₹50,000 bail.

Rakesh Sachan had been with the Samajwadi Party and Congress before he switched to the BJP in January this year and was inducted into chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s UP cabinet (PTI)

Reacting to the court verdict, Sachan, who was also fined ₹50,000, said: “We respect the court’s verdict, but we will go in appeal in the sessions court against this decision.”

A controversy erupted on August 6 after Sachan was found guilty and disappeared with a copy of the court file soon after. Kamini, the reader of the judge, subsequently filed a complaint with the Kotwali police station, alleging that Rakesh Sachan took away the file that his lawyers had taken from her to review the verdict. HT has a copy of the complaint.

Before Monday’s court hearing, Sachan spent an hour with his lawyers and told reporters that the case against him was bogus. “I am going to the court of my own volition; the court never gave me any notice to appear. Media painted that I ran away with the copy of the order. That I am going to court is my message that I am very much here and deeply respect the law,” he said.

He was later taken into custody before the jail sentence was pronounced by the judge.

A one-year jail sentence does impact his membership in the state assembly.

The case against him was lodged when the then station officer Upendra Singh Udailia had arrested him with a rifle for which he could not produce the licence. Sachan had claimed that the gun belonged to his grandfather.

Samajwadi Party city president Imran Idris said the fact that the Kanpur police did not register an FIR against the minister despite the court official’s complaint speaks volumes of his clout.

“The information earlier (was) that he was sentenced to three years. That is why he took away the order copy from the court,” he claimed. To be sure, the judgment was only pronounced on Monday, not Saturday when the judge only ruled on his guilt.