MP lawyer in jail after judge says his birthday message ‘indecent’

The FIR was registered at the Station Road police station on February 8 based on a complaint from Mahendra Singh Chouhan, System Officer, Ratlam District Court, and includes charges of cheating, forgery and forgery for the purpose of harming reputation, and sections of the IT Act.

The complaint stated that apart from the mail, Yadav allegedly sent the JMFC a greeting card through speed post the
following day during court hours.

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Yadav’s brother Jay told The Indian Express that his sibling, who is married with four children, was arrested from his home. The police inspector in-charge of the station did not respond to calls from The Indian Express seeking comment.

Jay said that Yadav is arguing the case himself. On February 13, four days after the arrest, a lower court rejected Yadav’s bail plea. His family has approached the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court for bail with the next hearing on March 3.

In the bail plea, Yadav has cited a separate “private complaint” submitted by him to the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Ratlam, against the JMFC. He has also claimed in the plea that he had sent the birthday greeting as a social worker and president of Jai Kul Devi Sewa Samiti, Ratlam — and that he had downloaded the image from Google and used it as a “creative designer”.