The decision was issued by the court of additional chief
judicial magistrate J A Parmar, who stated that "it is not an offence to
hold a rally, but it is an offence to hold a rally without permission." In
addition, the court stated that "disobedience can never be
tolerated." Reshma Patel, the leader of the Nationalist Congress Party
(NCP), is among those convicted.
On July 12, 2017, to commemorate one year since the infamous
public flogging of some Dalits in Una, which sparked a large-scale agitation in
the state, Mevani and his associates led a 'Azadi Kooch' from Mehsana to
Dhanera in neighbouring Banaskantha district.
Kaushik Parmar, one of Mevani's associates, had requested
permission from the Mehsana executive magistrate to hold the rally under the
banner of Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, an organisation founded by the
Independent MLA. Despite the fact that it was later revoked by the authorities,
the rally was held by the organisers.
While convicting the ten accused, the court noted that they
could have challenged the executive magistrate's order before appropriate higher
authorities and then held the rally after obtaining proper permission.
Following the rally, Mevani and others were charged with
unlawful assembly under Section 143 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) because they
were not granted permission to hold the march. In the case, the police filed a
chargesheet against 12 people.
Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU)
president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is now a member of the Congress, also attended
the rally. He is also one of the defendants in the case.
However, because Kumar was not present when the court issued
the charge against the accused in April of last year, the court issued an order
to hold a separate trial against him when he appears before the court.
The trial against the ten defendants, including Mevani,
began in April of last year. It did not include another Kumar or another
accused who had died.
Mevani was arrested twice by the Assam Police last month on
various charges. On April 20, he was arrested in Gujarat's Banaskantha district
and flown to Guwahati the next morning after a BJP leader in Assam's Kokrajhar
district filed a complaint about a purported tweet against Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
