Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani was re-arrested in a new case on Monday, just after he was granted bail by a court in Assam in a case over tweets on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The court had reserved its order on the bail application in the tweets case.
The police from Assam’s Barpeta, who came to arrest Mevani, haven’t yet said in which case the Gujarat MLA was arrested again. Sources have said one of the sections of the Indian Penal Code under which Mr Mevani has been charged in the new case includes allegations of stopping a government officer from doing his or her work.
Mevani was first arrested on Thursday April 20 from Gujarat’s Palanpur by a team of Assam police after a local BJP leader from Assam’s Kokrajhar filed a complaint against him. He was arrested over a tweet he posted on 18 April, in which he called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to maintain peace in Khambat, Himmatnagar and Verawal.
Mevani has termed his arrest “vendetta politics by the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office)” and as a “conspiracy by the BJP and the RSS”. He was charged with criminal conspiracy, offence related to place of worship, outraging religious feelings, and provocation that might lead to breach of peace.
On 20 April, Assam police arrested opposition politician Jignesh Mevani in Gujarat Prime Minister Modi was visiting the three urban areas, which had seen anti-Muslim violence during the Hindu festival of Ram Navami. Prime Minister Modi was visiting the three urban areas, which had seen anti-Muslim violence during the Hindu festival of Ram Navami.
Arup Kumar Dey, an Assam-based member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, accused Mevani of “spreading enmity between different communities”, and writing an “intentional insult to provoke breach of peace” and “statements amounting to public mischief”, among others, under the Indian Penal Code.
On 21 April, Mevani was remanded to police custody for three days by an Assam court. On 25 April, he was granted bail, yet was immediately re-arrested by police in Barpeta, another district of Assam, for “indulging in obscene acts and songs”, “voluntarily causing hurt”, “assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging duty” and “outraging the modesty of a woman”.
Aakar Patel, Chair of Amnesty International’s India Board, said: “The fact that Jignesh Mevani was arrested for a second time immediately after being granted bail reveals the authorities’ utter disregard for the rule of law and their intention to escalate the ongoing crackdown on dissent”.
He said that this re-arrest smacks of nothing else than a politically motivated act to silence opposition leaders ahead of the state assembly elections. “By constantly shrinking the space in which dissenting voices can operate, the Indian authorities are making a mockery of the right to freedom of expression. Their unrelenting witch-hunt against critics of the authorities completely undermines India’s international human rights obligations and its role as a member of the UN Human Rights Council,” he added.
