The Jodhpur NDPS court on Monday ordered the Rajasthan Police to file a case against former Union minister Jaswant Singh for allegedly serving an opium-laced brew to guests at a lunch hosted by him at his ancestral home in Barmer district on October 31.

Along with Singh, a senior BJP leader and former External Affairs and Finance Minister, nine other BJP leaders face charges under the stringent Anti-Narcotics Act.

The other nine accused include three Rajasthan ministers Ghanshyam Tiwari, Narpat Singh Rajvi and Madan Dilawar; three MPs Raghuveer Singh Kaushal, Lalit Kishor Chaturvedi and Kailash Meghwal; two BJP MLAs Jogeshwar Garg and Shankar Singh Rajpurohit; and chief whip of the BJP Legislature Party Mahavir Prasad Jain.

The action was taken by the court following a complaint filed under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) on November 2 in which Singh and the others were named. The court has asked the police to submit report after completing the investigation in the case.

“Special Judge of the NDPS court, Jodhpur, has admitted my complaint and sent it under Section 156/3 of the CrPC for investigation to the police station in Balotra, Barmer district,” Malam Singh Choudhary, counsel for complainant Omprakash Bishnoi, said.

The drug charges against Jaswant Singh, 69, certainly casts a shadow over an otherwise clean political image of the widely respected leader whose two-decade stint in politics and Government has invited few complaints of impropriety.

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