HC extends Ashish Sharma, Rakesh Sharma’s pre-arrest bail till April 26

The Himachal Pradesh high court on Monday extended the interim anticipatory bail of Hamirpur Independent MLA Ashish Sharma and Rakesh Sharma, father of Gagret MLA Chaitanya Sharma, till April 26. The duo were were booked for electoral offences and criminal conspiracy.

Ashish, now the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate from Gagret assembly constituency, and Chaitanya are among the nine MLAs, six Congress rebels and three independents, who voted in favour of BJP nominee Harsh Mahajan in the recently held Rajya Sabha elections. All of them later joined the BJP.

Advocate general Anoop Rattan on Monday said that the high court has extended the interim bail till April 26 and asked them to join the investigations and appear before the investigation officer whenever called.

“We have mentioned in our status report that Rakesh Sharma, a retired bureaucrat, despite orders of the court did not join the investigations and threatened the investigation officer when asked to appear before the police,” he said.

Both the accused have filed a fresh application in the HC seeking quashing of the FIR against them and the court has asked the state government to file its reply and posted the case for April 26, Rattan said.

Shimla police had last month registered a case against these two and other MLAs over “electoral offences”, bribery and criminal conspiracy related to the recent Rajya Sabha polls in which six Congress MLAs had voted for the BJP candidate from the state.

With agency inputs