PATIALA: The Sangrur district and sessions court on Thursday ordered the dropping of sedition charges against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from Mehrauli constituency of Delhi, Naresh Yadav, in the Quran sacrilege case of Malerkotla. The orders came even as the Punjab government has not yet granted the prosecution sanction against the Delhi MLA under Section 196 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which is required if the defendant is an elected public representative.According to Yadav’s counsel Narpal Singh Dhaliwal, the court stated that from the facts and figures presented before it, a sedition case was not made out against the MLA who had been arrested by the Punjab police in July 2016 from Delhi after the prime accused in the sacrilege case, Vijay Kumar, had named him to be behind the conspiracy.Yadav has been out on bail after he was remanded in police custody on 24 July 2016 for two days, and had later remained in judicial custody until August 1. He had been booked under sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.On 24 June 2016, torn pages of the Quran were found scattered on a road in Muslim-dominated Malerkotla town of Sangrur. It had led to violence and burning of vehicles by an angry mob. Yadav was one of the four persons arrested in the case. Among the others was Vinay Kumar, Vijay, Nand Kishore Goldy, and Gaurav. The police had claimed that all three had confessed to the crime, and Vijay had revealed that he wanted to take revenge for Dinanagar and Pathankot terrorist attacks.The court has now remanded the case to the court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM) of Sangrur for the trial.

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