Ahmedabad

Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani was arrested by the Assam Police late last night and was flown to Assam from Ahmedabad this morning. He was arrested reportedly on a complaint by a BJP leader in Assam over now-removed tweets on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Jignesh Mevani was arrested from a Circuit House in Palanpur around 11.30 pm on Wednesday and taken to Ahmedabad. Arup Kumar Dey, a BJP leader from Kokrajhar in Assam, had filed a complaint against him.

The First Information Report, or FIR, lists offences related to promoting enmity between communities. "As per a document shared by the officials of the Assam police, an FIR has been lodged over a tweet by Mevani few days back. However, the tweet has been withheld by Twitter. It was about Nathuram Godse. Mevani was first brought to Ahmedabad by road and then taken to Assam by air early today morning," Mr Mevani's aide Suresh Jat was quoted as telling news agency PTI.

Gujarat Congress president Jagdish Thakor and other Congress leaders rushed to Ahmedabad airport after learning about his arrest and shouted slogans against the BJP government. Mr Mevani, a Dalit leader and convenor of political party Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, is an independent MLA who extended support to the Congress last year. He is an MLA from Gujarat's Vadgam, a lawyer activist and a former journalist.

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His Twitter account shows that tweets posted by him on April 18 have been withheld due to a request by authorities. 21 Comments Mr Mevani, along with political activist and Jawaharlal Nehru University's former students' union leader Kanhaiya Kumar, had held a press conference with Congress's Rahul Gandhi in September last year, where Mr Kumar had joined the Congress party and Mr Mevani extended his support to Mr Gandhi till the end of his term as an independent MLA, following which he would join the Congress.