Court convicts Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel for house-trespass

New Delhi: Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel was on Friday convicted by a court here for trespassing the house of a realtor in an East Delhi colony in 2015.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal held Goel and four others saying the case against them was proved beyond reasonable doubts. "To conclude, the prosecution has been able to prove its case beyond reasonable doubts...Accordingly, Ram Niwas Goel, Sumit Goyal, Hitesh Khanna, Atul Gupta and Balbir Singh are convicted for an offence under section 448 (house-trespass) of the IPC...," the court said.

It also convicted co-accused Sumit Goyal under section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), besides the offence of house-trespass. The court will hear arguments on the quantum of sentence on October 18. Goel, through advocate Mhd Irshad, had earlier denied the allegations in the case. According to an FIR registered on a complaint by a local builder, Manish Ghai, Goel and his supporters had raided one of Ghai's houses in Vivek Vihar on the night of February 6, 2015, a day before the Delhi Assembly elections.

Goel had allegedly raided the house of Ghai accusing him of stashing liquor, blankets and other things for distribution ahead of the polls, the FIR had said. The AAP leaders had refuted these claims, saying they had gone to the house with a police team comprising the local station house officer and assistant commissioner of police, among others after making a PCR call in this regard. "As per the complainant, some labourers were staying at a house that was owned by him.

He received a call from one of them at about 9.30 pm on February 6, 2015, about Goel and his associates forcibly entering the building and damaging the property," police had said in a charge sheet. Ghai also alleged that the group broke a cupboard, drawers, kitchen items, windowpanes and mirrors in the house. When the labourers tried to resist, they were allegedly physically assaulted. A case of rioting, trespassing, causing mischief and voluntarily causing hurt was lodged against the accused.