Jignesh Mevani arrest: 10 points

Independent MLA and Dalit leader from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani was arrested at night in Gujarat, flown to Assam, and taken to a court which rejected his bail plea and granted 3-day police custody for interrogation. All of it happened in less than 24 hours. The way a sitting MLA was treated for a 'controversial' tweet triggered a lot of reactions.

Hyderabad: Independent MLA and Dalit leader from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani was arrested at around 11.30 pm late night on Wednesday for a purported tweet in which he mentioned Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mevani was then flown to Assam and taken to Kokrajhar by police. By the end of the day, a city court rejected his bail plea and allowed the petition seeking custody of the legislator, granting 3-day police custody for interrogation.

The MLA's arrest and the way it was being conducted triggered a lot of reactions. Here are the 10 points in this development:

1. 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 of the legislator's tweets on Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in a manner that would disrupt social tranquillity. The legislator's tweet mentioned Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse.
2. Assam police arrested Mevani from Palanpur town in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district in the dead of the night and took him to the north-eastern state by air in the early hours of Thursday. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. "The way Mevani was arrested is totally unjustified. The Assam police were supposed to give prior intimation to the Gujarat government as well as the State Assembly speaker. However, it seems there was no intimation, the way the arrest was made," said senior Constitutional expert and Rajya Sabha member KTS Tulsi.
6. Advocate Mohan Shyam, senior panel counsel, Government of India, however, said that a Union Minister, an MP or MLA get immunity from the arrest "only in the civil matter". "Such a person can't also be arrested before or after 40 days of the session. However, in criminal matter there is no immunity," said advocate Shyam. He said that it's not mandatory to give prior information before the arrest "only local police need to be informed."
7. Senior Supreme Court lawyer and a Constitution expert SP Singh told ETV Bharat that if the arrest is made within the Assembly premises, intimation is required. "In other cases, intimation can be given later also," said Singh. When asked about immunity for an MLA, Singh said that the arrested person should not be treated like other criminals.
8. Congress organization general secretary KC Venugopal said Mevani’s arrest was “undemocratic and unconstitutional” and such moves strike at the very foundation of democracy. Party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told reporters, “Shahenshah is terrified. Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani is arrested overnight by the Assam Police. There is a message and a sign of this panic, of this nervousness."
9. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, meanwhile, claimed that he was unaware of the identity of Jignesh Mevani. Sarma questioned how he could hold a political vendetta against someone he is not aware of. "I am not aware of the specifics of the case. Who will do vendetta politics when I don't know him? There will be enough evidence in Congress ruling states where things (tweets) have been taken seriously," Sarma told reporters.
10. A couple of tweets on Mevani's Twitter handle are not visible on his feed with a message displaying that the tweets have been withheld in India based on a "legal demand". "This Tweet from @jigneshmevani80 has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand," reads the message on Twitter.