Simarjeet was booked in an alleged rape case in July the previous year. The court has sent Simarjeet and others to three-day police remand.
The four others who surrendered along with Bains are his brother Paramjit Singh Bains alias Pamma, his employee Pardeep Kumar alias Gogi, Baljinder Kaur and Jasvir Kaur. Earlier, the police had arrested two accused in the case – the former MLA’s brother Karamjit Bains and his close aide Sukhchain Singh.
Before his surrender, Simarjeet on his Facebook page posted in Punjabi, “Said it before and will say it again. We have full faith in the judicial system of the honourable court. Sardar Simarjeet Singh Bains surrendered in Ludhiana court today as per court orders and the truth will come out very soon…Lok Insaaf Party”.
Fifty-two-year-old Simarjeet, the founder-cum-president of Lok Insaaf Party (LIP) and two-time MLA from Ludhiana’s Atam Nagar constituency, was booked in a case filed in 2021 by a 44-year-old woman. She had alleged that the former MLA had raped her multiple times in 2020 after she approached him for help in a property dispute case.
The police registered an FIR against Simarjeet, his brothers — Karamjit Singh and Paramjit Singh, and four others including Baljinder Kaur, Sukhchain Singh, Jasvir Kaur and Pardeep Kumar alias Gogi, under sections 376 (rape), 354 (assault or criminal force on woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 120B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on July 10, 2021.
In April this year, the Ludhiana court had declared Simarjeet and other accused in the case as ‘proclaimed offenders’ after they had failed to appear for hearings and the police also failed to arrest them.
The former MLA had then moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court which also rejected his plea to quash the order declaring him as proclaimed offender.
Simarjeet has all along been claiming that rape case against him was “politically motivated”, and was filed ahead of the 2022 Punjab elections due to “political vendetta”. Simarjeet, and his elder brother Balwinder Singh Bains, has been two time MLAs — in 2012 and 2017, but lost from their respective bastions (Atam Nagar and Ludhiana South segments) in 2022.
While the two — Simarjeet and Balwinder — are into politics, and popularly known as Bains brothers; their other two siblings — Karamjit and Parminder — are businessmen.