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A Delhi court on Friday extended the police custody of former Delhi law minister Jitender Singh Tomar by two days. Tomar has been arrested in an alleged fake degree case.
Tomar also moved a fresh bail plea on which the court sought police reply and listed the matter for further hearing on Monday.
The court order came after Delhi Police submitted that Tomar’s custody was required because one person Madan Pratap Chauhan, who allegedly provided the BSc degree to Tomar, is already being interrogated and they both needed to be confronted with each other.
Metropolitan Magistrate Navjeet Budhiraja allowed Delhi Police to quiz 49-year-old Tomar, arrested on June 9, till June 21 when he will be produced in court.
The accused was produced in court after expiry of his four-day police remand. During the arguments, the Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Kumar Shrivastava told the court that some officials --
Jai Narayan Yadav, Naval Kishor Singh and three others – from the college, from where Tomar allegedly pursued law, have come over to Delhi and the Aam Aadmi Party MLA needs to be confronted with them.
The prosecutor, while seeking Tomar’s custody, also told the court that he was given a questionnaire with 250 questions out of which some have been answered and several were remaining.
The court then confirmed with the politician whether he was given any questionnaire and he admitted having been given the same but claimed that he has answered all the questions.
Advocate Rajiv Khosla, however, appearing for Tomar, opposed the police plea for custody saying they were harassing his client.
Tomar, an MLA from Trinagar, was arrested on the morning of June 9 following an investigation into the complaint by Bar Council of Delhi that he had obtained a fake law degree from the Bihar college.
An FIR was registered against Tomar on June 8 at Hauz Khas police station and he was booked for alleged offences of cheating, forgery, using forged documents as genuine, forgery with intent to cheat and criminal conspiracy.
The defence counsel asked, “Why do they need the remand now when the documents have been verified.”
When Khosla said that Chauhan is the person whom Tomar’s brother, now expired, had met to arrange the degree, the court asked the MLA if he was admitting that he has a forged BSc degree.
Khosla said his client’s BSc degree as well as the LLB degree are both genuine and he had appeared in all the exams.