Assam court gives bail to Jignesh Mevani, pulls up police for ‘false FIR’

GUWAHATI: A court in Assam’s Barpeta district granted bail on Friday to Gujarat’s independent MLA Jignesh Mevani as the judge pulled up the state police for filing a “false FIR” against the Dalit leader in a “manufactured” case of molesting a policewoman and requested the Gauhati high court to stop cops from turning Assam into a police state.
Judge Aparesh Chakravarty said the second FIR accusing Mevani of assaulting and trying to outrage the modesty of a woman sub-inspector inside a moving vehicle was “false”."No sane person will ever try to outrage the modesty of a lady police officer in presence of two male police officers and there is nothing in the record to hold that the accused Jignesh Mevani is an insane person,” the judge said. He said the case was “manufactured for the purpose of keeping the accused Jignesh Mevani in detention for a longer period, abusing the process of the court and the law”.
In his 13-page judgment, citing cases of false FIRs and other police actions, the judge said a copy of the order would be sent to Gauhati HC for the Chief Justice to look into this aspect and see whether it can be taken up as a PIL to curb police excesses in the state.
Gauhati HC is currently hearing a PIL by Delhi-based lawyer Arif Jwadder on “80 fake encounters” since May last year that led to “deaths of 28 persons and more than 48 injuries” in Assam. The district judge noted that the “Legislature never imagined that the court will have to deal with a case like the instant case where an accused will be tried allegedly for committing some offences while he was in the custody of the police, which no one else has seen”.
After the court order, Mevani said Assam police targeted him under instructions of their political bosses, operating from PMO.
"I was only asking the PM of India to ask people of Gujarat to maintain peace and harmony. My arrest was nothing but a conspiracy and this has not gone well amongst dalits and people of Gujarat. People are closely following it and they (BJP) will have to pay the price for it. The Gujarat elections are coming in a fewmonths," Mevani said.
Mevani was arrested by Assam police on April 20 from Palanpur in a case related to an "objectionable" tweet against PM Narendra Modi. After spending three days in police custody and one day in judicial custody, he was granted bail on April 25. He was soon rearrested by Barpeta police and charged with assaulting a woman officer.
In his appeal to Gauhati HC, Justice Chakraborty said "to prevent registration of false FIR like the present one and to give credibility to the police version of occurrences like the arrest of accused persons," the HC may consider directing Assam police to reform themselves by directing each and every police personnel engaged in law and order to wear body cameras, install CCTV cameras in vehicles while arresting an accused or taking an accused to some place for discovery of some articles. "Otherwise, our state will become a police state, which society can ill-afford," he said "Converting our hard-earned democracy into a police state is simply unthinkable and if the Assam police is thinking about the same, the same is perverse thinking." Mevani's counsel Angshuman Bora said since he was picked up from Kokrajhar by Barpeta police, moments after he was granted bail in the first case, there are some formalities to be completed in Kokrajhar on Saturday after which he will be free.