Saturday, 08 October 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Social media influencer Bobby Kataria was granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 25,000 on Friday after he surrendered in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) in Dehradun in a public drinking case. Kataria who was missing for about two months arrived in the court on Friday from Delhi with a team of lawyers. The officials informed that the court granted the bail to Kataria on Friday considering all charges were bailable.
Kataria who has over eight lakh followers on Facebook and six lakh followers on Instagram elicited public outrage after one of his videos went viral in August in which he was seen drinking alcohol by placing a table and chair in the middle of a busy Dehradun road by blocking traffic. He had uploaded the video in July but after the backlash on social media platforms, the Dehradun police booked him in August under sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 336 (an act which endangers human life or the personal safety of others), 290 (public nuisance) and 510 (misconduct in public by a drunken person) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 of the IT Act. The police had secured a non-bailable warrant against him after he ignored three summons by police. A police team also went to his residence in Gurugram to arrest him after he failed to appear in the local court but failed to nab him. The police also announced a bounty of Rs 25,000 on the absconding Kataria in an attempt to arrest him sooner but without the desired effect. The police had declared that they would start the process of attaching movable and immovable properties of Kataria under Section 83 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) if he failed to appear in court within the stipulated time.
