New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, who was sentenced to six months in prison, was granted bail in the 2015 rioting case on a bond of Rs 10,000. A Delhi Court on Friday sentenced Goel to a six-month imprisonment in connection with the 2015 riot case in which he trespassed the house of a realtor in an East Delhi colony in 2015.  The court had also sentenced Ram Niwas Goel's son Sumit Goel and four others to six months in jail for 'rioting and causing hurt' at the house of the realtor, Manish Ghai. However, all the accused in the case have been granted bail in the case.

Goel was, last week, convicted under Section 448 of the India Penal Code (IPC) for house-trespass by a Rouse Avenue Court. Section 448 carries a maximum punishment of up to one year which means that Goel is safe from disqualification.

The case is related to an incident which took place on February 6, 2015 when AAP MLA from Shahdara constituency and his supporters had allegedly raided one of the houses of a local builder in Vivek Vihar. Manish Ghai, the builder, had alleged in the FIR that Goel raided his property accusing him of stashing liquor, blankets and other stuff for distribution ahead of the assembly polls.

According to reports, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal held Goel and four others – Sumit Goel, Hitesh Khanna, Atul Gupta and Balbir Singh – guilty, saying that the case against them had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

“I am of the view that the punishment needs to be deterrent in this case,” Vishal said, also imposing a Rs 1,000 penalty on each of them. However, the court granted them bail on a bond of Rs one lakh to enable them to file appeals in a higher court. Seventy-two-year-old Goel, through advocate Mhd Irshad, had denied the allegations in the case.

According to an FIR registered on a complaint by builder Manish Ghai, Goel and his supporters had raided one of Ghai's houses in Vivek Vihar on the night of February 6, 2015, a day before the Delhi Assembly elections. Goel had allegedly raided the house of Ghai accusing him of stashing liquor, blankets and other things for distribution ahead of the polls, the FIR had said.

The AAP members had refuted these claims, saying they had gone to the house with a police team comprising the local station house officer and assistant commissioner of police, among others after making a PCR call in this regard.

Ghai also alleged that the group broke a cupboard, drawers, kitchen items, windowpanes and mirrors in the house. When labourers tried to resist, they were allegedly physically as assaulted. A case of rioting, trespassing, causing mischief and voluntarily causing hurt was lodged against the accused.

(With additional inputs from PTI)