The court of principal district and sessions judge Basant Kumar Goswami on Thursday granted anticipatory bail to the BJP’s Baghmara MLA Dhullu Mahto in connection with a rioting case dating back to April 2018 in Akashkinari colliery area of Katras.

This happened a day after the police landed up at his residence in Chitahi, Baghmara block, related to a February 14, 2020 case of attempt-to-murder near his home, filed by a man in nearby Barora.

The whereabouts of Dhullu are not known.

On April 25, 2018, coal trader Jagdish Kumar Rai lodged a case with Katras police against 56 people including Dhullu and his elder brother Sharad Mahto , charging them with beating the driver and cleaner of his (Rai’s) vehicle when he went to the weighing house of Akashkinari colliery for coal. Rai said that the MLA and other accused tried to beat him up too but he somehow managed to flee.

Public prosecutor B.B. Pandey said that the court granted bail to Dhullu in this case as around 50 co-accused had already been granted bail.

Judge Goswami also heard another case against Dhullu. A former BJP women’s wing leader had accused him of rape under IPC 376, assault or criminal force against a woman with the aim of outraging her modestyunder IPC 354, and others. The judge transferred the case to the court of additional district and sessions judge Rajeev Kumar.

This case will now be heard on February 22.

The woman in her online complaint filed on November 23, 2018, had claimed Dhullu had called her on her mobile phone on November 15 the same year and asked her to meet him at the guest house of Hindustan Zinc factory in Baghmara a week later. When she went there, he tried to grab her in the presence of BJP Katras unit worker Anand Sharma but she somehow escaped and told her husband about the incident. Dhanbad police on October 6, 2019, lodged an FIR against Dhullu after the woman moved to high court alleging that the police were delaying the FIR.