Assam Police arrests Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani over “objectionable” tweets on PM Modi

April 21: Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani was arrested by Assam Police from Palanpur town in Gujarat on Wednesday night over a tweet and taken to Assam by air on Thursday Thursday. Mevani, who is an Independent MLA supported by the Congress, was produced before the chief judicial magistrate’s court in Kokrajhar after arrival from Ahmadabad via Guwahati on Thursday evening.

The Dalit leader was apprehended from Palanpur town in Gujarat on Wednesday night after a First Information Report under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the IT Act was filed at the Kokrajhar police station. Arup Kumar Dey, a BJP leader from Kokrajhar in Assam, had filed a complaint against him. The First Information Report, or FIR, lists charges like criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between communities, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and sections of the Information Technology Act.

According to the FIR that led to Mevani’s arrest, he had purportedly posted a tweet, claiming Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi ‘considered Godse as God’. Nathuram Godse had murdered Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Mevani, who has pledged his support to the Congress, reportedly used the same tweet to urge Modi to appeal for communal harmony during the prime minister’s visit to Gujarat this week, the FIR at the Kokrajhar police station.

However, Mevani’s Twitter account shows that two tweets posted by him on April 18 have been withheld on “legal demand”.

Gujarat Congress president Jagdish Thakor and other Congress leaders rushed to Ahmedabad airport after learning of his arrest and shouted slogans against the BJP government. They alleged that the police refused to show an FIR or reveal the reason for arresting Mr Mevani.

Mevani had won as an Independent MLA from the Vadgam (scheduled caste) seat in Banaskantha district in the 2017 assembly election with Congress support. He had earlier said he would fight the next assembly election as a Congress candidate.