The Dehradun police moved in on Rathore for his part in what they say was a plot to tie the hands of Dushyant Gautam, the party’s national general secretary, in the Bhandari affair. You could call it the end of a long-running tussle over viral material, petitions and accusations of one-upmanship in the political arena.
What led to this
Officers from the Dalanwala station picked him up at his Buggawala office in Haridwar. Once in, they put an extortion charge on the table, pointing to what they have in the way of witness accounts and other evidence, before making an appearance in court with him.
“The court has put him in 14 days of judicial custody,” says SSP Dehradun Parmendra Dobhal. He is now in Sudhowala District Jail while we look into the social media noise about a certain VIP.
The complaints and the alleged setup
Gautam put in a formal written complaint at Dalanwala on January 5. His version is that 66-year-old Rathore and Urmila Sanawar, with some political parties in on it, put together and put out some doctored audio and video.
He says it was meant to put a bad name on him and the rest of the senior brass, and to ruffle public order. In the time since, you can find more than one FIR in both Haridwar and Dehradun on the matter.
*Where we are with it
Here is how the case has played out:
– Delhi High Court put the word out for posts to be pulled in 24 hours
– We’ve seen two FIRs quashed; work goes on in two others
– Rathore has put the record straight, saying he didn’t share anything or go after any leaders
– And now he’s in for 14 days
On the charges and in court
To start with, the case was filed under a number of sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the IT Act. But when the evidence and statements came in, they tacked on Section 308(6) of the BNS for the extortion angle.
Rathore had been at a presser earlier, putting forward that the Uttarakhand High Court had done away with two of the four FIRs from Bahadrabad and Jhabrera. But the police point to Justice Rakesh Thapliyal’s bench, which let them keep going with the other two.
Some context on the Ankita Bhandari file
You may remember the case of Ankita Bhandari, the 19-year-old from the Vanantara in Rishikesh who was found dead in 2022. The man they are looking at is Pulkit Arya, the resort’s manager and son of ex-BJP man Vinod Arya.
Then in December, Sanawar put out an audio she claimed was with Rathore to make it seem like Gautam was in on things. That was enough for Gautam to go to the Delhi High Court with a defamation suit. The court told the Congress and AAP to clean up their act and remove the offending posts in a day.
For his part, Rathore will have you believe there is a design to ruin his career. He has no part in any of the clips or the talk about the leadership. There was also the whole episode with Sanawar – they were once said to be wed, which got him run out of the BJP for six years for a supposed UCC violation. He has since backtracked and says they never were.
What to expect
The Dehradun side of the house will be pressing on with the new count and the open FIRs. You can bet on more legal wrangling from either side now that the courts have weighed in on the takedowns and the FIRs. For the moment, the police are left to figure out where these clips came from and why they were put out there in the first place.
