Senior lawyer deems extortion case against former CRPF officer Vikash Yadav baseless as US names him conspirator in assassination plot.
New Delhi: Senior lawyer Raj Kamal Handoo, who is representing former Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officer Vikash Yadav, has stated that the extortion case in which Yadav was named and arrested by Delhi police, has no basis.
He further described both, the First Information Report (FIR) and the subsequent chargesheet filed in the case as works of “fiction.”
Earlier this week, the U.S. government named Yadav as the main conspirator in the alleged Gurpatwant Singh Pannun assassination plot. On Friday, he was added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “Most Wanted” list for his alleged role in the plot.
Handoo said that the entire extortion case that has been filed against him in Delhi is “inherently fallacious and fictional” and, while legal proceedings are ongoing in the case, Yadav was granted regular bail by the court in April.
“If you go through the chargesheet filed in the case, you will realise that he has clearly been falsely implicated. The documents contain no logical statements—it’s as if one incident was taken from one place and pasted together to complete this fiction,” he stated.
According to Handoo, Yadav, who was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell on extortion charges on December 23 last year on a complaint filed by a Rohini-based businessman, was not in service when he approached Handoo for legal assistance in the case. He was later granted bail by the court of Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Devender Kumar Jangala on 22 April this year, after spending four months in Tihar jail.
Yadav, who was on deputation to the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), sources say, was repatriated back to the CRPF in May last year. He was subsequently removed from service, sources said, for ‘exceeding the scope of the duties assigned to him’.
Sources said Yadav, a resident of Rewari district in Haryana, held the position of Senior Field Officer in the intelligence agency, equivalent to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.
Sources advising Yadav, said that they have instructed him not to interact with the media. Those who visited his village to meet him after his name was made public were unable to locate him at his home.
The U.S. government released an indictment in November last year, detailing the alleged assassination plot against Pannun, in which Yadav was named as “CC-1.” Another Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, was also named as an accused in the plot. Gupta, who was arrested in Prague, Czech Republic, in June last year on the orders of U.S officials last year, is currently incarcerated in New York and undergoing trial. As per the U.S indictment, Gupta was recruited by Yadav to participate in the said plot in May last year.
On Friday, Gupta requested a public defender. No immediate decision was made on his request by the presiding judge, and the case was postponed to January 17 next year.