Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party leader Babubhai Katara, main accused in the human trafficking case, on Friday moved a sessions court seeking his release after a trial court had dismissed his two consecutive bail pleas recently.
Katara, in a revision petition which was filed against the July 11 order of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kamini Lau, alleged the investigators have deliberately invoked a new penal section of the Indian Penal Code against him, which empowers them to keep him in judicial custody for 90 days instead of the normal 60 days during the pendency of the probe.
Arguing before Additional Sessions Judge S N Gupta, Katara's counsel R S Jakhar said the magistrate failed to appreciate the fact that Section 467 (forgery of valuable security and will etc) of the IPC, which provides that an accused can be kept behind bars for 90 days, was purposefully invoked by the police against the Parliamentarian.
He said the MP merited release on the ground that the police was 'unfair and partial' in their probe into the matter.
The court, after taking his petition into the records, deferred the hearing to July 24.
Earlier, the Magistrate had dismissed his bail plea saying that section 467 of the IPC was rightly invoked against the MP as the police, during the probe, had recovered several forged documents at his instance.
Katara along with a woman, Paramjeet Kaur, and a minor boy was arrested at IGI airport here on April 18 while trying to take them to Toronto in Canada on the diplomatic passports of his wife and son.
