Kokrajhar ( Assam ) , April 30 : Gujarat’s Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Saturday was released from jail after completing legal formalities at Kokrajhar town .
Hearing the bail petition, Barpeta District and Sessions judge Aparesh Chakraborty also urged the Gauhati High Court to direct the state police force to “reform itself”, referring to the number of police encounters over the last one year.
The court also pulled up the state police for lodging a “false FIR” after granting bail to Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani in a case related to the alleged “assault” of a woman police officer,
Mevani was granted bail on a Personal Recognisance (PR) bond of Rs 1,000 in the case filed at the Barpeta Road police station.
“My bail order on its own is a jurisprudence,” Mevani said after his release. The court on Tuesday had sent him to five days in police custody in a case where he was accused of “assaulting” a policewoman while being brought by a police from Guwahati to Kokrajhar.
Jignesh Mewani, an independent MLA from Gujarat, was picked up by a posse from Assam Police last week from Gujarat and was arrested in a case against him for a purported tweet on Prime Minister Narendra Modi where he had claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “considered Godse as God”.
The MLA from Vadgam seat in Banaskantha, who has pledged his support to the Congress, had used the same tweet to also urge Modi to appeal for communal harmony during his visit to Gujarat, the FIR at Kokrajhar Police Station, which was accessed by PTI, said.
After being released on bail in the case on his tweet, the Dalit leader from Gujarat was rearrested after being charged with assaulting a policewoman who was part of the police party which accompanied him to Korkrajhar, a complaint for which had been registered in Barpeta.
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 on a woman intending to outrage her modesty).
Meanwhile , supporters of Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Saturday said they were withdrawing their call for “jail bharo” (courting arrest) agitation as the independent MLA from Gujarat has been released from jail in Assam.
The agitation had been announced to protest Mevani’s arrest by Assam Police last week. A court on Friday granted him bail in a case where he is accused of assaulting a woman police personnel.
“Since Mevani is released from jail and there is no other FIR against him, we have withdrawn our agitation,” said his close aide Subodh Parmar.
“We wanted to make the point that it is better for us to surrender ourselves to the police than letting them arrest us on false grounds,” he added.
Earlier, a tweet from Mevani’s handle had said the agitation will proceed till he was set free without any new First Information Report being registered against him.
Mevani, MLA from Vadgam Assembly constituency in Gujarat, on Saturday completed pending bail formalities at the Kokrajhar court in Assam, and was set to return to his home state.
Last week, Mevani was picked up by an Assam Police team from Palanpur in Gujarat over his purported tweet claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “considered Godse as God.” Soon after being released on bail in the case, he was rearrested for allegedly assaulting a policewoman who was part of the police party which accompanied him to Kokrajhar.
( With Agency inputs )
