Kokrajhar(Assam): A district court on Thursday evening rejected the bail plea of Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani and allowed the petition seeking custody of the legislator, granting 3-day police custody for interrogation. The Dalit leader was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Kokrajhar which heard the pleas from the independent MLA as well as the Police.
The police sought 14-day custody for interrogation. Mevani's counsel moved the bail petition. After hearing both sides, the court junked the bail application. It granted the police custody of Mevani for three days with standard conditions including provision of meeting with advocate at a stipulated time.
Mevani was arrested from the Circuit House in Gujarat on Wednesday night. He was flown to Assam by a team led by Additional Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Panesar. On arrival at the Guwahati airport, the police whisked the legislator away through the backdoor avoiding the media glare. They took him to Kokrajhar by road.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that he was not aware of Jignesh Mevani's identity. Sarma, responding to a question on the sidelines of a programme, claimed that he was not aware of who Mevani was. "I don't know. Who is he?" Sarma sought to know when asked for his reaction to the arrest. "I am not aware," he said.
Also read: Arrested Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani reaches Assam, taken to Kokrajhar
Commenting on the episode, senior advocate Nekibur Zaman termed the arrest of Mevani as political vendetta. Thousands of such cases are pending against the legislators in Assam. The hasty manner in which Assam police acted is surprising. There are constitutional provisions to arrest any sitting legislators. First, the police have to obtain permission from the Speaker of the concerned Legislative Assembly. Secondly, when there is an issue of transfer from one state to another, there has to be a transit remand issued by a court. We have to decide whether these legalities were followed in this case or not, Zaman said.
On April 19, Kokrajhar police registered a case against the Dalit leader based on a complaint from a BJP supporter Arup Kumar Dey alleging that one the legislator's tweets suggesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to appeal for communal harmony was in a manner that it would disrupt the tranquility.
He alleged that the tweet caused widespread criticism and has the propensity to disturb public tranquility, prejudicial to maintenance of harmony among a certain section of people. It is more likely to incite a section of the masses belonging to a certain community to commit any offence against the other community in this part of the country, the complaint stated.
“Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi worships and considers ‘Godse’ as God and appealed the PM on his visit on April 20 to Gujarat should make an appeal to the public for the peace and harmony in areas such as Himmatnagar, Khambhat, and Veraval where communal violence had taken place,” Mevani had tweeted. The same had been withheld by Twitter. This Tweet from @jigneshmevani80 has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand, the label on the tweet said.
Also read: Mevani's arrest unconstitutional, says Congress
He was booked under IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 153(A) (promoting enmity between two communities), 295(A) (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) and provisions of the IT Act.
