The Barpeta sessions court in its order granting bail to Jignesh Mevani requested the Gauhati High Court to take up a petition on its own against recent police excesses in the state
AMN / WEB DESK
Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani was granted bail by a court in Assam’s Barpeta district on Friday in a case related to the alleged assault of a woman police officer.
Barpeta District and Sessions judge Paresh Chakraborty granted bail to Mevani on a Personal Recognisance (PR) bond of Rs 1,000 in the case filed at the Barpeta Road police station.
The sessions court also asked the Gauhati High Court to order the Assam Police to wear body cameras and install CCTV cameras in their vehicles to capture the sequence of events when an accused is taken into custody.
“Converting our hard-earned democracy into a police state is simply unthinkable,” sessions court judge Justice Aparesh Chakraborty said in the order. “If the instant case is accepted to be true and in view of the statement of the woman recorded by the magistrate…which is not, then we will have to rewrite the criminal jurisprudence of the country,” the court said.Ads by
“Contrary to the FIR (first information report), the woman has given a different story before the learned magistrate…In view of the testimony of the woman, the instant case is manufactured for the purpose of keeping the accused Jignesh Mevani in detention for a longer period, abusing of the process of the court and the law,” the court said.
The court had heard Mevani’s lawyer and the public prosecutor on Thursday on the bail application and reserved the order for Friday.
The Dalit leader was arrested in this case on Monday soon after he was released on bail in another case in Kokrajhar district.
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.
It is alleged that he assaulted the woman officer when she was accompanying him from Guwahati airport to Kokrajhar along with senior police officials.
In this case, he was 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).
The court had Tuesday sent him to five days in police custody.