Summary:
RAIPUR: Having been charge-sheeted by the CBI in connection with the sex CD case , Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee ( CGPCC ) president Bhupesh Baghel will not apply for bail , senior party sources said.“Baghel is not engaging a lawyer or moving any bail application,” senior Congress leaders said. The state Congress president is at present appearing before the special CBI court in the state capital where the CBI had filed its charge-sheet.Sources close to Baghel said he might launch a satgrahaya inside the prison. Congress leaders have been maintaining for long that the BJP government has been trying to victimize Baghel personally as he has been raising many issues against the BJP government and its leaders of the poll-bound state.Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh are scheduled to be held by November–December this year.The sleaze CD, purportedly showing a minister, had surfaced in October last year after the state arrested a journalist Vinod Verma from his Ghaziabad residence and seized copies of sex CD. The first FIR against unknown persons is on the basis of a complaint lodged by one Prakash Bajaj, who claimed that an unknown person had called him up on a landline, threatening to expose a CD of his “Aaka” if they don’t pay up.Another FIR is under 67(A) of the IT Act is on the basis of a complaint lodged by PWD minister Rajesh Munat in which he had named Baghel and journalist Vinod Verma. Later, the BJP claimed that the video clip was doctored and morphed to malign the minister’s image and subsequently the case was handed over to the CBI.CBI had registered two FIRs, including one naming Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhupesh Baghel, and had begun probe in December last year into the Sex CD case—which minister Rajesh Munat and ruling party leaders alleged was fabricated and circulated with the motive to defame the minister as well as the BJP government in power.One FIR was against unknown persons on the charges of extortion and intimidation and another under the Information Technology (IT) Act, naming state Congress president Bhupesh Baghel and journalist Vinod Verma, who was arrested earlier by the state police..