NE NEWS SERVICE
GUWAHATI, APRIL 29
A court in Assam’s Barpeta district has granted bail to Dalit leader and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani n an assault case on Friday.
He was arrested earlier this month for posting allegedly “defamatory” tweets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi – he was granted bail in the case. However, as he was released, the Barpeta police rearrested him for allegedly assaulting a policewoman. He was remanded to five days’ police custody by the Chief Judicial Magistrate against which his lawyer filed an appeal in the sessions court. The court had reserved the order.
A case was lodged against Mevani under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), section 153(A) (promoting enmity between two communities), 295(A), and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and sections of the IT Act for a couple of tweets against PM Modi.
Mevani, a vocal critic of PM Modi and his BJP government, had said that the police’s action against him was part of political vendetta. The Congress opposed the arrest of the independent MLA.
In the second case, the Assam police had said that Mevani was arrested under a new case with serial number 81/22, u/s 294/323/353/ 354.
Mevani, a member of the Dalit community and a lawyer-activist by profession, had won the 2017 Gujarat Assembly election from Vadgam. Though he contested as an independent, he is considered to be close to the Congress and ideologically opposed to the ruling BJP.
