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Case against Jaswant Singh in opium row
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November 02, 2007 20:23 IST

A complaint against senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh and nine other party leaders, including some Rajasthan ministers, has been filed before a special court in Jodhpur seeking action against them for allegedly using opium in a social function.

Singh had hosted that event in his ancestral village Jasol in Rajasthan's Barmer district on October 31 and dissident BJP leaders of the state including four ministers of the Vasundhara Raje government and many others attended it.

It was alleged that Singh welcomed the guests by offering them opium diluted in water, a charge denied by him. A local resident Om Prakash Vishnoi, through his counsel Malam Singh Choudhary, filed the complaint before the special judge, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act cases, under various sections of the law.

Apart from Singh, party leaders Raghuveer Singh Kaushal, Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi, Kailash Meghwal, state cabinet ministers Ghan Shyam Tiwari, Narpat Singh Rajvi, Madan Dilawar and Mahaveer Prasad Jain and two BJP MLAs Jogeshwar Garg and Shankar Singh Rajpu Rohit have also been named in the complaint.

Vishnoi has urged the court to register a case against the BJP leaders for 'openly disobeying the law' in a social gathering.

The court has put the matter for office record and would decide on it on Saturday.

On the other hand, the local Congress unit has demanded disqualification of Singh from the Rajya Sabha and called for an independent inquiry against him. Jodhpur district Congress chief Sayed Ali Ansari has dispatched a memorandum to Vice President and Speaker of the Rajya Sabha, Hamid Ansari, in this regard.


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