Bhati murder: DP Yadav’s bail plea rejected

NAINITAL: The Uttarakhand high court rejected the bail application of Uttar Pradesh strongman D P Yadav, who was convicted of killing former Dadri MLA Mahendra Singh Bhati in Ghaziabad in 1992.

On February 28, Yadav was convicted along with three others — Karan Yadav, Praneet Bhatti and Pal Singh — in the Bhati murder case by a special CBI court in Dehradun.

Earlier, on April 9, D P Yadav and Pal Singh had moved a bail application before the high court. The HC asked CBI to submit a reply within three weeks in the case.

“The bail application was moved by D P Yadav and Pal Singh, stating that the conviction was based on ‘wrong evidences’. We submitted our reply within the time period stipulated in the honourable court’s order,” said Arvind Vashishth, CBI lawyer.

After more than an hour of argument, the division bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Sarvesh Kumar Gupta rejected the bail application of the duo.

Bhati and his friend Udai Prakash Arya were gunned down by armed assailants on September 13, 1992, at the Dadri railway crossing. Another person, O P Kayal, was injured in the ambush. D P Yadav was the MLA from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh at that time.

The case was transferred to CBI on September 10, 1993. The chargesheet, submitted in 1996 by CBI, named eight people, including D P Yadav, in the double-murder case. Four of the eight accused died in the interim, with the case dragging on for over two decades. The case was transferred to the Dehradun CBI court in the end of 2000, on the direction of the Supreme Court.

D P Yadav, Karan Yadav and Bhatti were convicted under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 326 (causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.