Former Bihar minister Ramadhar Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday surrendered in a lower court in Aurangabad after quietly remaining a proclaimed absconder for 16 years and being forced to resign from the state Cabinet following the revelation last week.
The CJM’s court rejected Singh’s bail application and ordered 14-day judicial custody for him. But after he complained of chest pain, the court granted him hospitalisation.
Despite being apparently healthy during his presence in court and seen to be walking comfortably, Singh occupied a bed at an Aurangabad hospital with an air cooler placed beside his bed even as dozens of patients lay on the floor due to lack of beds.
Singh, an influential BJP leader from the upper castes and MLA from Daudnagar in Aurangabad district, was declared an absconder from law by a lower court in Aurangabad in 1995 in a case of delivering a patently anti-Muslim speech on December 17, 1992, in the communally sensitive days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He was sent to jail on December 23, 1992 and came out on bail on January 5, 1993, never to present himself at trial proceedings again.
He was declared an absconder in December 1995.
The Opposition RJD described Singh’s surrender in court eight days after his resignation as a mockery of the justice system.
The RJD’s Abdul Bari Siddiqui, leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, on Thursday demanded that the government should put Singh’s case in the speedy trial course.
The BJP, however, kept defending Singh and kept open his chances of returning to his Cabinet berth as soon as he got a judicial relief from the present case.