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Banna Gupta being taken to jail on Tuesday. Picture by Bhola Prasad
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Jamshedpur West MLA Banna Gupta was sent to jail after the court of first-class judicial magistrate rejected his bail plea in a temple wall demolition case on Tuesday.
The Congress leader is being lodged at Ghaghidih Central Jail.
Last year, police registered a case against Gupta and one of his close associates, Sanjay Yadav, under Sections 448, 472, 331, 298 and 295 of the IPC for allegedly demolishing the wall of the temple in Kadma. Temple owner Chandidas Mukherjee, a resident of Bhatia Bustee, had filed an FIR against the two after the incident on February 9, 2012.
Except Section 295 (acts intended to hurt religious feelings), all the other sections are bailable.
Speaking to the media, Gupta said he wanted the court to pass an order on Tuesday itself after the judicial magistrate suggested during the hearing that he should apply for bail in an upper court. “I insisted that she pass an order today,” he added.
The court subsequently rejected the petition and ordered that the legislator be taken into custody.
Mukherjee, who owns a Kali Jagadhatri temple adjacent to his house, had accused Gupta of demolishing a portion of the wall along with eight supporters as it was coming in the way of the widening project of a road linking Bhatia Bustee with Kadma.
According to the complainant, Gupta entered the temple premises and asked for prasad. As Mukherjee got busy attending to the MLA, his supporters demolished the wall with the help of an excavator. A deity was also allegedly damaged in the incident.
Acting on the FIR, the court had issued an arrest warrant against Gupta and Yadav in 2012 itself. According to sources, Yadav, a Congress supporter who had bagged the contract for road widening work, had moved Jharkhand High Court, seeking anticipatory bail. However, the court rejected his plea.
But since the warrant against Gupta stood valid, he opted to surrender before the court.
Gupta had arrived at the civil court at 3pm and was forwarded to jail around 7pm.
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