The Assam Police arrested lawmaker and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani from Gujarat’s Palanpur late on Wednesday night in connection with a case filed against him over a tweet in the north-eastern state’s Kokrajhar.
Mevani has been booked under the Indian Penal Code’s Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), section 153(A) (promoting enmity between two communities), 295(A), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and the Information Technology Act.
News agency quoted Suresh Jat, an aide to Mevani, saying the First Information Report (FIR) was lodged against the lawmaker over the tweet, which has since been withheld, about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. “Mevani was first brought to Ahmedabad by road and then taken to Assam by air early today [Thursday] morning.”
Mevani, an independent lawmaker from Vadgam, joined Congress in 2021 ahead of assembly elections in Gujarat due later this year.
Some of Mevani’s tweets are invisible on his feed with a message that they have been withheld in India based on a “legal demand”.
In a tweet, the Congress’s Gujarat unit said the Assam Police and their Gujarat counterparts picked up Mevani at 11:30 pm. “Treating a public servant as a criminal at night is CONDEMNABLE.”