Three AAP MLAs booked for assault

New Delhi: The Delhi police has registered a case against three AAP MLAs on Thursday for allegedly manhandling and abusing a woman in the Assembly premises recently.

The AAP, however, called the FIR as an act of “vendetta politics”.

The three MLAs against whom the case has been registered are Okhla Amanatullah Khan, Malviya Nagar MLA Somnath Bharti and Tilak Nagar MLA Jarnail Singh, said deputy commissioner of police (North) Jatin Narwal.

They have been accused of assaulting a woman with an intent to outrage her modesty and using words or gesture to hurt a woman, the police said.

The incident happened on June 28 and after the woman recorded her statement on June 29, the police sought a legal opinion on the matter, sources said.

The woman, on whose complaint the FIR has been lodged, accused the three MLAs of roughing her up and hurling abuses at her.

“I had gone to see the proceedings of the House, but could not get the pass for the Visitor’s Gallery. And, while I was standing outside the building, a group of men, including Khan and Singh, who were part of a scuffle that was happening there, came towards me,” she claimed in her complaint.

She said that they pushed her and shoved her. She was later taken to a room where she was assaulted, threatened and beaten up by Mr Singh and Mr Khan. The duo was later joined by Mr Bharti, who hurled abuses at her, she claimed.

The police said that they are scanning the CCTV footage from the place of the incident to establish the sequence of events.

The AAP dispensation, in its tenure of a little over two years, has had an uneasy relationship with the police, with 15 of its MLAs being arrested for different charges ranging from rioting, outraging the modesty of woman, sexual harassment, criminal intimidation and assault.