A magistrate’s court in Gujarat on Thursday convicted and sentenced to three months in jail Congress-backed Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani and nine others in a five-year-old case related to an “azadi march” held without permission.
The court accepted Mevani’s plea for a stay on the order and granted bail to all the convicts until they filed an appeal in a higher court against the judgment.
Mevani, who was recently arrested by Assam police over a tweet on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and later on a policewoman’s harassment complaint and obtained bail in both cases, said the BJP government’s “priority” was to target “those who fight for poor landless Dalits”.
Mevani had returned to Gujarat from Assam after obtaining bail just two days ago on Tuesday.
The Dalit leader accused the BJP of being against the community.
Mevani said in a statement uploaded on Twitter: “Along with my colleagues, I have been sentenced to 3 months of imprisonment by a Magisterial Court in Mehsana of Gujarat for holding a rally without permission in 2017.
Mevani said in the statement: “The ‘Azadi Kooch’ rally was supposed to be held to demand intervention of Gujarat govt to reclaim the rightful land allotted to Dalits which was illegally occupied by goons & anti-social elements.
“As a result of the march, thousands of Dalits got possession of their rightful land after 49 years. Taking this forward, more than 1,500 acres of illegally occupied land worth Rs 300 crore were reclaimed for Dalits of Gujarat. Land for landless Dalits was Babasaheb Ambedkar’s last unfulfilled dream & it is an honour for having the privilege of making his dream for an equal India come true.
“It is an irony that despite laws like the Land Grabbing Act & Atrocities Act in force, instead of those illegally occupying land of poor Dalits, BJP govt’s priority is to go behind those who fight for poor landless Dalits.
“We respect the judgment of the lower court but we will challenge this in the higher courts. For the record, I have no regrets whatsoever and I will readily do this all over again if needed for the rights of my Dalit brothers & sisters.
“I do hope, and hope is all I can, that the same vigour with which anti-Dalit BJP govt is targeting me case after case, is also shown 1) to give justice to lakhs of students whose carriers are ruined because of paper leaks, 2) form a fair SIT to probe thousands of crores worth of drugs being peddled into our Gujarat, 3) catch scamsters who have fled the country with thousands of crores of hardworking Indians’ money.”
Additional chief judicial magistrate J.A. Parmar held Mevani and nine others, including NCP functionary Reshma Patel and some members of Mevani’s Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, guilty of being part of an unlawful assembly under IPC Section 143.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each on all the 10 convicts.
The Mehsana A division police had lodged an FIR against Mevani and the others for holding the “azadi march” from Mehsana to Dhanera in Banaskantha district without permission in July 2017.
Reshma, then a supporter of reservation for the Patidar community, was not a member of any political party when she took part in the march.
The Congress on Thursday hit out at the BJP by saying the “arrogant rulers” should know “we will neither bow down nor get scared”.
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala asked whether it had become a crime in Gujarat and India to raise issues of Dalits. “It seems this has become a crime in Modiji’s Gujarat because this cannot be a crime in Bapu’s (Mahatma Gandhi’s) Gujarat, it cannot be a crime in Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s Gujarat…,” he said.
