Jignesh Mevani Sent To 5-Day Police Custody In Assault Case

A local court in Assam's Barpeta district remanded Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani to a five-day custody in an assault case against him.

New Delhi: Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani on Tuesday was sent to a five-day custody by a local court in Assam’s Barpeta district in an an assault case filed by a woman police officer. This is the second case filed against the Dalit leader from Gujarat in Assam. Jignesh Mevani was re-arrested by Assam Police in the assault case on Monday after he was granted bail by a local court in a separate case against him over his tweets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Chief Judicial Magistrate Mukul Chetia remanded Mevani to police custody when he was produced in his court in the afternoon. Mevani’s lawyer Angshuman Bora said they will move the court for bail on Thursday.

Jignesh Mevani had earlier on Monday been released on bail by a court in Kokrajhar in another case related to a tweet by him on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, only to be re-arrested in a case slapped on him for assaulting a policewoman who claimed that he assaulted her while he was being brought by a police posse from Guwahati to Kokrajhar.

Jignesh Mevani has been booked under IPC sections 294 (uttering obscene words in public), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 353 (assaulting a public servant in the execution of duty) and 354 (using criminal force to a woman intending to outrage her modesty).

Mevani, an Independent MLA backed by the Congress, was first arrested on April 19 from Palanpur town in Gujarat, and was brought to Kokrajhar for tweeting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Senior Assam Congress leaders who led a march demanding Mevani’s release were stopped and taken to a police station here in Barpeta district before being released after some hours on Tuesday. District Superintendent of Police Amitabh Sinha said none was taken into custody.

Congress MP Abdul Khaleque who was one of the leaders detained at the Barpeta police station alleged that the BJP “is all out to stifle freedom of speech which we cannot allow at any cost. We demand immediate release of Mevani”.

Bora on Monday had told PTI that the allegations against Mevani were “atrocious” and there was no mention of the Barpeta case when he was in police custody for three days or at the time his bail plea for a case on a tweet he had issued on Prime Minister Narendra Modi was being argued in the Kokrajhar court. Suddenly, after he was granted bail, he was shown as rearrested, Bora said.

Kokrajhar First Class Judicial Magistrate Bhavna Kakoty had granted him bail on Monday on furnishing a bond of Rs 30,000. While being taken away in a van from Kokrajhar to Barpeta on Moday, Mevani had alleged that this is a “conspiracy on the part of the BJP and the RSS to tarnish my image and systematically destroy me”.

Both Assam and Gujarat, from where he hailed, are BJP-ruled states. According to the FIR that led to Mevani’s arrest from Gujarat, he had purportedly written a tweet, claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “considered Godse as God”.

The independent MLA from Vadgam seat in Banaskantha, who has pledged his support to the Congress, had used the same tweet to also urge Modi to appeal for communal harmony during his visit to the Gujarat, the FIR at Kokrajhar Police Station, which was accessed by PTI, said.

The Kokrajhar court had remanded him to three days of police custody which ended on Sunday after which he was sent to one day’s judicial remand and finally released on bail on Monday only to be re-arrested.