Vikas Barala granted bail by Punjab and Haryana HC: Senior BJP leader's son accused of stalking IAS officer's daughter

Vikas Barala was on Thursday granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the Chandigarh stalking case, ANI reported.

Chandigarh Stalking Case: Punjab and Haryana High Court grants bail to accused Vikas Barala pic.twitter.com/0CeQTh4iPJ

— ANI (@ANI) January 11, 2018

Barala, son of Haryana BJP chief Santosh Barala, was accused of stalking Varnika Kundu, the daughter of an IAS officer. His petition for bail was dismissed four times  by the trial court. In December, Barala’s counsel, seeking regular bail from the court, submitted his client had been behind bars for nearly four months.   [caption id=“attachment_4139113” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Vikas Barala. CNN News18[/caption] During the cross-examination of Kundu on Monday and Tuesday,  Barala’s lawyer argued there were contradictions in her statement given to the police, also claimed her father exercised pressure on the police to fabricate evidence and implicate Barala and his friend Ashish Kumar, The Indian Express reported. According to a report in Hindustan Times, call records proffered by Barala’s lawyer showed Kundu wasn’t in the city right before the incident on the intervening night of 4 August and 5 August last year. However, Kundu rejected the arguments, pointed out various technical errors in the call detail records. She also stood by her allegations and reiterated the entire sequence of events in the court, according to another report in  The Indian Express. The incident allegedly  took place on 4 August,  2017. Kundu accused Vikas, the son of a senior BJP leader, and his friend Kumar of following her car in the middle of the night in Chandigarh. The men were arrested following her complaint but released on bail as they were booked under bailable sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Motor Vehicles Act. However, they were arrested again on 9 August and were then charged with attempted abduction under Sections 365 and 511 of the IPC. With inputs from PTI