A local court in Jaunpur on Wednesday sentenced former MP Dhananjay Singh to seven years of imprisonment besides a penalty of ₹50,000 in a four-year-old case of kidnapping a UP Jal Nigam project manager.
On Tuesday, the court held Dhananjay Singh and his associate Santosh Vikram guilty of kidnapping ‘Namami Gange’ project manager Abhinav Singhal and extortion.
Additional Sessions Judge Sharad Kumar Tripathi held Singh and Vikram guilty.
Dhananjay Singh was planning to contest Lok Sabha polls from his old seat Jaunpur in east Uttar Pradesh. Both the convicts have been sent to judicial custody.
Muzaffarnagar resident Abhinav Singhal had filed a case against Dhananjay Singh and his partner Santosh Vikram on May 10, 2020, at Linebazar police station under sections of kidnapping, extortion, conspiracy and others, said district government counsel (criminal) Satish Pandey.
It was alleged that Vikram, along with two associates, kidnapped Singhal and took him to the residence of the former MP where Dhananjay Singh came with a pistol and abused him and pressurised him to supply low-quality material. On refusal, he threatened and demanded money.
The former MP was arrested in this case and later got bail from the Allahabad High Court, said Pandey.
Dhananjay Singh, a strongman from eastern Uttar Pradesh, was an MLA from the Rari constituency between 2002 and 2009 as an independent candidate.
Later he was an MP from 2009 to 2014 as a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member.
He is known as ‘Purvanchal Bahubali’.
In 2011, BSP president Mayawati had expelled him from the party on charges of anti-party activities.
Presently with the Janata Dal (United), Dhananjay had recently, through a post on ‘X’, indicated his plans to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from the Jaunpur seat.
Between 1996 and 2013, Dhananjay was charged four times under the UP Gangster Act. By 2022, he had been the subject of over three dozen criminal cases, with many still pending. In some cases, he was acquitted due to witnesses turning hostile.
Article source: livemint.com
