A local court in Gujarat on Tuesday acquitted Congress legislator and prominent Scheduled Castes (SC) activist Jignesh Mevani and six others in a 2016 case registered against them for unlawful assembly and rioting.
The court of Additional Metropolitan Magistrate P.N. Goswami acquitted Mr. Mevani, Manabhai Pateliya, Ramesh Bariya, Mukesh Patel, Dashrath Pagi, Meesh Narsinh, and Darshan Pathadiya, who were booked on charges of unlawful assembly, rioting, and causing damage to public property.
They were accused of damaging a police vehicle, shouting slogans, and rioting while being taken to a stadium under detention for organising a protest at a crossroads on Ashram Road to support the cause of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s sanitation workers in September 2016.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered against Mr. Mevani and the others at the Navrangpura Police Station under Sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 146 (rioting), 147, 294 (obscene act in a public place), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 341 (wrongful restatement) of the Indian Penal Code, and provisions of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.
Prosecution’s case
According to the prosecution’s case, the accused had damaged police vehicles and beaten up a police driver while being taken under detention to a police station for organising a protest without permission.
Mr. Mevani is a two-time legislator who was elected in the December 2022 Assembly election from the Vadgam seat as a Congress candidate, and is the working president of the party’s State unit.
Earlier, in 2017, he had won the seat for the first time as a Congress-supported independent candidate, and subsequently joined the Congress party.
