GUWAHATI: Congress leader Pawan Khera has moved the Gauhati High Court seeking anticipatory bail in connection with a criminal case registered against him by the Crime Branch police station in Guwahati.
The case was registered based on an FIR lodged by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s wife following Khera’s claims that she possesses passports of three countries, owns luxury properties in Dubai and has investments worth several lakh crore rupees in the United States.
The Congress leader’s plea, registered on Monday morning by the High Court Registry, has been listed for hearing on Tuesday, according to Congress sources.
The Assam Police had moved the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Guwahati on April 7, two days after Khera made the claims, seeking issuance of a non-bailable warrant of arrest against him, but the court rejected the plea.
On April 10, the Telangana High Court granted one-week transit anticipatory bail to the Congress leader. The Assam government challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court, and it stayed the order.
Last Friday, the apex court refused to entertain Khera’s plea for interim protection from arrest and asked him to approach a competent court in Assam to seek anticipatory bail.
On April 7, an Assam Police team, accompanied by Delhi Police personnel, had gone to Khera’s residence in connection with the case, but did not find him. On the same day, the Assam Police had claimed to have recovered “incriminating” material from his residence following a search.
Sarma earlier dismissed Khera’s claims and sniffed a Pakistani angle to it.
He claimed that the “fraud and fabricated” documents, which the Congress leader had relied on while making the claims, were “supplied from a Pakistani social media group”.
Later, the Chief Minister had asked Khera to surrender to the law in Guwahati.
“I think Pawan Khera should surrender to the law. The more one runs away from the law, the bigger the problem becomes,” Sarma stated.
