The Court was seized of a plea filed by Upadhyay seeking to quash the criminal proceedings and also the summons issued against him by a special court in September 2021 on a plaint filed by an employee of Devendra Aggarwal, a former legislator from Sadabad.
According to the complaint, Upadhyay had hurled casteist abuses to the complainant, who belonged to the ‘Dhobi’ community, a scheduled caste. It was alleged that during the assembly polls in 2017, there was a rift between Aggarwal and Upadhyay since both were political rivals.
In a rally of Upadhyay’s son in February 2017, Aggarwal had allegedly opened fire and one of the supporters from the opposite side was killed. Since Aggarwal was the sitting legislator, the police didn’t take any action against him and thus Upadhyay along with the supporter’s family, petitioned the Allahabad High Court seeking directive to the police authorities to take action.
Meanwhile, Aggarwal’s employee approached a special court with a complaint against Upadhyay. He claimed in his plaint that in October 2017, the accused along with other unknown persons had abused him by using his caste and had threatened to kill him. He even claimed that Upadhyay had asked his men to drag him to his car but due to the presence of the rival group members, they couldn’t drag him.
In his defence, Upadhyay claimed that the case was borne out of political vendetta and the criminal complaint under the Scheduled Caste Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was lodged against him at the behest of Aggarwal.
Upadhyay challenged the summons in the Allahabad High Court and urged the court to quash the proceedings but his plea was dismissed in March 2022.
He then moved the apex court in appeal.
Source: Barandbench
