The Madhya Pradesh High Court granted bail to two local Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) functionaries, Himanshu Shrotriya and Sukrit Sharma, who were charged with dacoity.
This charge stemmed from their actions of forcibly taking away a High Court judge’s car parked outside Gwalior railway station.
The purpose of taking the car was to transport the ailing vice-chancellor of a private university to a hospital.
Justice Sunita Yadav, presiding over a single-judge bench, approved bail for the ABVP’s Gwalior secretary and deputy secretary under the Madhya Pradesh Dakaiti Aur Vyapharan Prabhavit Kshetra Adhiniyam (MPDVPK Act), an anti-dacoity law.
The ABVP functionaries, affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), approached the High Court after their initial bail plea was rejected by Special Judge Sanjay Goyal in the subordinate court last Wednesday.
The special judge had denied bail, stating that assistance should be sought with politeness and not force.
The defense counsel, Bhanu Pratap Singh, asserted that his clients, being law students and not criminals, were motivated by the intention to aid a person in urgent medical need rather than committing a crime.
Bhanu Pratap Singh further highlighted that the High Court, in granting bail, considered the absence of any criminal record for the duo.
According to additional prosecutor Sachin Agrawal, Himanshu Shrotriya and Sukrit Sharma were arrested on December 11 for taking the HC judge’s car to transport the ailing vice-chancellor to the hospital. The vice-chancellor, Ranjeet Singh, later succumbed to a cardiac arrest.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav directed the Director General of Police (DGP) to investigate the incident and evaluate whether the registration of a dacoity case was justified, given the ABVP functionaries’ lack of criminal background.
Former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in a letter to Chief Justice Ravi Malimath, sought forgiveness for the ABVP office-bearers, emphasizing that their actions were driven by a humanitarian cause to save a life.
ABVP’s state unit secretary, Sandeep Vaishnav, defended the duo, stating they were unaware the car belonged to a high court judge and were responding to a medical emergency of a fellow passenger.
