'Sex CD' case: Ex-BJP leader Kailash Muraraka surrenders in court, granted bail on personal bond and surety of Rs 1 lakh each

Raipur: Former BJP leader Kailash Muraraka, named an accused in the "sex CD" case allegedly involving a Chhattisgarh minister, surrendered before a special CBI court in Raipur on Wednesday. He was later released on bail by the court.

Muraraka was expelled from the BJP on Tuesday after he was made the accused number one in the charge-sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the case. Muraraka surrendered before the court of Special CBI Judge Sumit Kapoor. Later, he moved a bail application which was accepted, his lawyer UB Pandey told PTI. The court granted him bail on a personal bond and surety of Rs 1 lakh each, he said.

File image of Kailash Muraraka. News18

Pandey claimed Muraraka was not summoned by the CBI when the charge-sheet was filed on Monday. The lawyer said after his client came to know through the media that he was being dubbed as an "absconder", he decided to surrender before the court. According to the CBI charge-sheet, the purported "sex CD" of Chhattisgarh PWD Minister and BJP leader Rajesh Munat was allegedly made by superimposing his face on a porn clip on the orders of his then party colleague Muraraka.

Muraraka rejected the charges levelled against him as "baseless" and said the truth will come out in the days to come. "I have full faith in the judicial process and whenever the court will direct, I will appear before it. I have told everything to the CBI. The charges against me are baseless and fabricated," he said in the court premises. Muraraka said Chhattisgarh Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel, a co-accused, has nothing to with the CD scandal.

The Congress leader was accused of circulating the CD, which the minister had termed as "fake". "I feel he (Baghel) is 'paak saaf' (completely clean)," he said, when asked about the alleged role of the Congress leader, now in jail, in the entire episode. On 24 September, the CBI, which probed the sex CD case that came to light last year, had filed the charge-sheet in the special court against Baghel and five other accused.

The other accused are Muraraka, journalist Vinod Verma, businessman Vijay Bhatia, short-film maker Vijay Pandya and one Rinku Khanuja. Khanuja, a Raipur-based automobile dealer, had allegedly committed suicide in June this year. Baghel, Verma and Bhatia had appeared in the special court on Monday after they were served notices by the CBI.

Baghel, who did not apply for bail, is currently in judicial remand for 14 days, while Verma and Bhatia are out on bail. Muraraka and Pandya did not appear in the court on Monday. All the accused were booked under IPC sections 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation), 471 (using as genuine a forged document), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 67A of the IT Act (whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the electronic form any material which contains sexually explicit act).

Baghel told reporters on Monday that he was being falsely implicated in the case. In October last year, a controversy had erupted after a "porn video", allegedly featuring Munat, surfaced following the arrest of Verma from his residence in Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) by the Raipur police.

According to the Raipur Police, a case of blackmail and extortion was registered at the Pandri police station here based on a complaint by BJP leader Prakash Bajaj who had said he "was being harassed over phone by an unidentified caller who told him that he had a CD of his 'aaka' (master)".

After the investigation, a search team was sent to Delhi and Verma was arrested from Ghaziabad on 27 October, 2017. The police had then claimed to have recovered 500 CDs and pen drives, among other items, from Verma's residence.

Munat had then lodged a complaint against Baghel and Verma at the Civil Lines police station in Raipur for allegedly tarnishing his image through the "fake CD".
The Chhattisgarh government had then recommended a CBI probe into the case.