Patna: A Bihar court on Saturday rejected the bail plea of Union Minister Ashwini Choubey's son Arijit Shashwat, accused of inciting communal violence in the state's Bhagalpur district, a government lawyer said.

After hearing both sides, the Bhagalpur district court declined to grant bail to Shashwat.

Last week, a case was lodged against Shashwat -- a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader -- on charges of taking out a procession without prior permission, inciting communal sentiments and roaming with arms on the streets of Bhagalpur.

Shashwat, who has been evading arrest, had moved the bail plea in the civil court, following which the court on Tuesday sought the case diary from the police to ascertain his role in the communal flare-up on March 17.

Afther that, acting on an application from the district police, the court issued an arrest warrant against Shashwat.

Choubey has already described FIR as "a piece of garbage" that was registered by "corrupt police officers in Bhagalpur".

Shashwat unsuccessfully contested the last assembly polls as the BJP candidate from Bhagalpur, considered a stronghold of Choubey, who was elected MP from Buxar in 2014.

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El Fasher (AP): Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organisation said on Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation's civil war escalated in recent days.

The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, which local officials blamed on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, came as the group has seen apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan. That includes Burhan appearing near a burning oil refinery north of Khartoum on Saturday that his forces said they seized from the RSF.

International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.

In the Saudi hospital attack in El Fasher, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered the death toll in a post on the social platform X.

Officials and others in the capital of North Darfur province had cited a similar figure Saturday, but Ghebreyesus is the first international source to provide a casualty number. Reporting on Sudan is incredibly difficult given communication challenges and exaggerations by both the RSF and the Sudanese military.

“The appalling attack on Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” Ghebreyesus wrote. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”

Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked Saturday, he added.

“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” he wrote. “Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”

Ghebreyesus did not identify who launched the attack, though local officials had blamed the RSF for the assault. 

The RSF and Sudan's military began fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.

Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll in the civil war.