Ex-UP discom chief 'Lallu' gets one-year jail for defamatory remarks against former minister Shrikant Sharma

LUCKNOW: Former UP Congress president Ajay Kumar alias Lallu was awarded one-year imprisonment on Saturday for making defamatory comments against Shrikant Sharma, who was the power minister in Yogi 1.0 government, regarding the alleged Rs 2,600 crore EPF scam in the UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL).
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on Lallu and said that if he did not deposit the fine, he would have to spend 15 days more in jail.Lallu had requested the court to release him on probation instead of awarding him sentence, but additional chief judicial magistrate AK Srivastava turned down his request.
“Since Lallu is (former) state president of a national party and is in public life and as such it is more expected of him that he must observe patience on his conduct and language in public life. If Lallu is given the benefit of probation, it would send a wrong message to the common public,” observed the court.
Sharma, who is now Mathura MLA, had filed a criminal complaint in the court in 2019 pleading the court to summon and punish Lallu as he had made indecent allegations against him in public.
Lallu was summoned and put on trial. Delivering the judgment on Saturday, the court sentenced him for the offence he committed under section 500 of IPC. Before filing the case in court, Sharma had sent a legal notice to Lallu seeking an apology, but he did not tender any apology.
The court found that the statement made by Lallu was totally wrong, malicious and misleading and it was made without verifying the facts as part of a conspiracy to harm Sharma’s image and prestige and to defame him.
In his statement, Lallu had on November 4, 2019 made an allegation against Sharma and also questioned the purpose of his alleged tour to Dubai. Lallu had sought a probe into Sharma’s alleged Dubai visit in September-October 2017, saying it smacked of national security issues.
“It should be probed as to why Shrikant Sharma visited Dubai in September-October 2017. Whom did he meet there?” Lallu had said in a tweet. He had also sought to know as to who all met the minister in Dubai.
Lallu had also said that the matter of investment of power employees’ EPF money in DHFL not only amounted to corruption but was also related to national security.
In his complaint, the former minister said that he did not go to Dubai in 2017 and also stressed that the decision to invest in the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) was taken during the previous Samajwadi Party government headed by Akhilesh Yadav.