Gujarat High Court refuses relief to youth leader Rahul Soni accused of extortion

The Gujarat High Court on Friday refused to provide relief to Rahul Soni, the now-suspended leader of Ahmedabad city unit of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, who is accused of extortion and criminal intimidation.

Notably, Soni had moved the court for quashing of an FIR registered against him by Vivek Shah, son of Subhash Shah, director of Hipolin Limited, in Anandnagar Police Station for extortion and criminal intimidation. However, the single judge bench of Justice Sonia Gokani refused to quash the FIR considering the gravity of the allegations, despite the fact that the counsel for Soni submitted that the matter has been settled between the parties.

Interestingly, the court had earlier instructed Soni to reverse all the transactions which have been allegedly carried out under pressure as mentioned in the FIR.

Notably, Vivek in his complaint before Anandnagar police station had alleged that Soni and his aides frequently trespassed into his house and intimidated his family demanding a usurious interest rate of 1.5% a day on a sum of Rs 80 lakh borrowed by him in 2014. He had also mentioned in his complaint that Soni came to his house with a revolver and forced his parents to sign an agreement to sell their residence by paying a token amount of Rs 50,000 through RTGS.

Vivek had also alleged that Soni had then made his parents sign a bearer cheque and withdraw Rs 50,000 from a co-operative bank account. It was also alleged that Soni had forced his parents to transfer their house worth Rs 3.50 crore to his friend Rajesh Thakkar.