Mevani Acquitted In ‘rail Roko’ Case | Ahmedabad News – Times of India



Mevani Acquitted In ‘rail Roko’ Case | Ahmedabad News – Times of India

Ahmedabad: A local court here on Tuesday acquitted Gujarat Congress working president and Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani along with 30 others including 13 women, from the case filed for obstructing a train during a demonstration against the state government’s policies in January 2017.
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate P N Goswami acquitted Mevani and other Dalit activists, giving them the benefit of the doubt, his advocate Paresh Waghela said.
Mevani and his associates had been booked by railway police in Ahmedabad on January 11, 2017, for blocking the Rajdhani Express for nearly 20 minutes at Kalupur railway station in the city, as part of a ‘rail roko’ demonstration to protest the state government’s policies. The protest took place while the state government’s Vibrant Gujarat Global Investment Summit was underway in Gandhinagar.
Mevani and the others were booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) dealing with unlawful assembly, rioting, voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty and criminal conspiracy. They were also booked under Section 153 of the Railways Act, which pertains to endangering the safety of people travelling by railway by rash or negligent act.
A sessions court had in 2021 refused to discharge him from the case. Mevani had approached the Gujarat high court in April 2023 demanding a transfer of this case to another magistrate’s court. He demanded a designated court in accordance with the Supreme Court’s directions to conduct speedy trials against legislators and parliamentarians.
In November last year, Mevani and six others were acquitted in a case registered against them in 2016 for alleged unlawful assembly, rioting and causing damage to public property at Income Tax Crossroads in Ahmedabad. They were detained by police for holding a demonstration without police permission and were accused of vandalizing a police vehicle, engaging in disorderly conduct and rioting.
They were protesting in solidarity with the sanitation workers of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.
Mevani, however, was convicted in two cases — one in Mehsana for taking out a rally without police permission and the other in Ahmedabad for staging a demonstration without police permission.
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