BJP MLA Rathore discharged in Dara Singh encounter case

Jaipur: BJP MLA Rajendra Singh Rathore was today discharged in the infamous Dara Singh encounter killing case of October 2006 by a local court here. He was later released from the Central Jail, Jaipur.

District and Sessions Judge, Jaipur, P K Jain today discharged Rathore, also the Chief Whip of the party in the State Assembly, from being the main conspirator in the local liquor smuggler Dara Singh encounter case.

There was no criminal conspiracy hatched by Rathore to kill a history sheeter from Jhunjhunu named Dara, the court observed.

After the court’s decision, an elated Rathore, a former MLA from Taranagar Assembly constituency, who was released from the jail, said that he will now go among the masses and apprise them of the government’s conspiracy to fix him.

“I will go to public and tell them that how the corrupt government tried to fix me. I am innocent and have no connection with the case and I was arrested under a conspiracy,” Rathore, a former BJP minister, told reporters here.

Rathore was behind bars in Jaipur Central Jail along with other police officials in connection with the case, taken up by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after a directive from the Supreme Court.

CBI had come out with a charge-sheet alleging that Rathore was the mastermind of the fake encounter as he was having rivalry with the deceased for supporting one group of liquor mafia of Jhunjhunu district in the state. Rathore, who was the Parliamentary Affairs Minister at the time of the incident, was arrested on  5th April.

PTI