Court pulls up assam police over jignesh mevani’s arrest, warns against converting “hard-earned democracy into a police state”

GUWAHATI: A local court in lower Assam’s Barpeta district has pulled up Assam Police for registering “false” case against Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani and “abusing the process of the court and

the law”. While granting bail to Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Friday in an assault case, the Barpeta District and Sessions court warned the Assam Police against “converting our

hard-earned democracy into a police state”. Ready for a challenge? Click here to take our quiz and show off your knowledge! “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,” said Barpeta District and Sessions Judge Aparesh Chakravarty in the order. The court

also urged the Gauhati High Court to direct the police force to “reform itself”. The court said the High Court should consider directing “each and every police personnel engaged in law and

order duty to wear body cameras, to install CCTV cameras in vehicles while arresting an accused or taking an accused to some place for recoveries of goods or other reasons, and also install

CCTV cameras inside all police stations.” Ready for a challenge? Click here to take our quiz and show off your knowledge! These measures should be considered 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 and the accused persons attempting to escape from police

custody at midnight, while the accused was allegedly leading the police personnel to discover something, and the police personnel firing and killing or injuring such accused, which has

become a routine phenomenon in the state,” it said. The court directed that a copy of the order be sent to the Registrar General of the High Court for placing it before the Chief Justice “to

look into this aspect and consider whether the matter can be taken up as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to curb the ongoing police excesses in the state”. The Dalit leader was arrested

on charges of assaulting a woman police officer on April 25 moments after he was granted bail by a court in Kokrajhar in a case over tweets on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was first

arrested on April 20 by the Assam Police from Gujarat’s Palanpur town and flown to Guwahati the next morning following a complaint filed by a BJP leader in Kokrajhar district over a tweet

against Modi. The court observed that the assault case against Jignesh  Mevani was “manufactured” to hold him in detention for a longer period, abusing the process of the court. “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 Shri Jignesh Mevani

is an insane person,” district and sessions judge Chakravarty said in his bail order.