Give Doon MLA better facilities in jail: Court

A local court has directed the Ambala Central jail authorities to provide B-class facilities to the Himachal MLA from Doon Assembly Constituency, Ram Kumar Chaudhary, inside the prison. With the court directions, the MLA — an accused in the murder of 24-year old Hoshiarpur girl Jyoti Kumari — will share barracks with only one other prisoner and is entitled to better toilet facilities.

The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Bhawna Jain, on Friday allowed Chaudhary's application seeking the B-class facilities. He had earlier told the court that he had to share space with hardened criminals.

Under the B-class facility, the MLA is also allowed access to newspapers.

Counsel for the accused, Amandeep Bindra, said that court allowed the application after it was brought before it that apart from being an MLA, Ram Kumar Chaudhary has completed his Masters and is a regular income tax payee.

Bindra added that under the Punjab Prison Manual, which is applicable in Haryana as well, the MLA was entitled to better facilities.

The court, he said, also issued directions to the Investigating Officer (IO) in the case to check if the Ambala tehsildar could execute an application, by the MLA, to transfer the power of attorney of his business interests to his wife. The move will spare jail authorities from taking the MLA to Baddi for the procedure.

Bindra said that the Himachal legislator wanted the power of attorney to be executed in favour of his wife on the ground that he has a large business in Himachal Pradesh and running them would become difficult in case the power of attorney is not executed.

The counsel added that the MLA earlier withdrew the plea seeking security in the jail as he anticipated that the court would grant him relief by providing him B-class facilities.

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