Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani has been granted bail by an Assam court
Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani was re-arrested in a new case today just after he was granted bail by a court in Assam in a case over tweets on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The court had reserved its order on the bail application in the tweets case yesterday.
He is accused of "assaulting and outraging" the modesty of a woman police officer in the new case against him.
The police from Assam's Barpeta, who came to arrest Mr Mevani, charged him under sections of the Indian Penal Code related to voluntarily causing hurt and stopping a government officer from doing his or her work.
Mr Mevani was first arrested on Thursday from Gujarat's Palanpur by a team of Assam police after a local BJP leader from Assam's Kokrajhar filed a complaint against him. Mr Mevani - an arch critic of PM Modi - has called his arrest "vendetta politics by the PMO (Prime Minister's Office)".
"It is a conspiracy by the BJP and the RSS. They did this to tarnish my image. They have been doing this systematically. They did it to Rohit Vemula, they did it to Chandrasekhar Azad, now they are targeting me," Mr Mevani told reporters today.
The 41-year-old has been charged with criminal conspiracy, offence related to place of worship, outraging religious feelings, and provocation that might lead to breach of peace.
In his complaint, BJP leader Arup Kumar Dey has alleged that Mr Mevani's tweets are "likely to incite a section of the masses belonging to a certain community".
In an interview to NDTV, Mr Dey said Mr Mevani has been "trying to divide people by his posts and always speaks negatively about Prime Minister Modi".
"We are lucky to have Modi ji as our Prime Minister and Mevani is trying to link his name with the recent (incidents of) violence. Is Prime Minister Modi responsible for that? He says Godse is Prime Minister Modi's God, what proof does he have?" he told NDTV.
The Congress has alleged that the arrest -within 24 hours of the complaint -- was made with an eye to the coming assembly elections in Gujarat, a state the BJP has been ruling since 1995.
"Modi ji, you can try to crush dissent by abusing the state machinery. But you can never imprison the truth," Congress's Rahul Gandhi tweeted.
Mr Mevani, an Independent MLA from Banaskantha's Vadgam seat, had said he would fight the next elections as a Congress candidate.