Kerala court directs police to file case against Thiruvananthapuram Mayor, MLA on bus driver’s complaint
Thiruvananthapuram: A Thiruvananthapuram court on Monday directed the Kerala Police to register a case against city Mayor Arya Rajendran, her husband and MLA K.M. Sachin Dev, and others for obstructing a bus driver from doing his job and other charges.
The court gave this direction based on a petition from H.L. Yadu, a contractual bus driver of the state-owned Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC). The others whom Yadu has named in his plea include the brother of Rajendran, his wife and another person.
This is the second case on the same incident, with the first one registered by a court here on Saturday, based on a petition filed by a lawyer.
Even though the lawyer’s petition accused Rajendran, her MLA husband, and others of obstructing the bus driver from doing his job, Yadu’s petition had other charges which included being abused by the group of the Mayor and also being forcibly restrained by them.
Yadu has been in the limelight since last week when he reportedly had a verbal spat with the Mayor and her husband. According to Yadu, the Mayor’s car (private) stopped in front of the bus while it was waiting at a traffic signal, about a kilometre away from the final destination, and accused the Mayor and her family members of preventing the bus from going forward, thus “obstructing him from doing his duty”.
But Mayor Rajendran accused Yadu of rash and negligent driving and also claimed that he made an obscene gesture at them. She denied the claim that they intercepted the bus at a traffic signal.
Following the incident, police reportedly detained Yadu for around 12 hours. After visuals surfaced showing that most of the statements that the Mayor made in her defence were false, the issue has now snowballed and become a major topic on social media.
The Mayor has now filed a petition before the cyber wing, complaining of a massive onslaught by a section of social media users against her. This gained tempo after reports that the 64GB memory card of the DVR inside the bus that Yadu was driving had gone missing and the police probe team is also looking for it.