Ahmedabad:Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel was today arrested by the city crime branch in connection with the second sedition case registered against him and sent to judicial custody by a Surat court.
“We took his custody through a transfer warrant (from Surat court),” Assistant Commissioner of Police K N Patel told PTI.
“Our officials have already left Surat with Hardik and they will reach here at midnight,” he added.
Surat police first booked him for sedition for allegedly advising a local youth to kill the police rather than commit suicide.
He may be produced before a metropolitan court here tomorrow.
On October 21, the Ahmedabad police’s crime branch filed sedition case against the 22-year-old leader and five of his aides — Ketan Patel, Dinesh Patel, Chirag Patel, Alpesh Kathiria and Amrish Patel — under IPC sections 121 (waging war against the government), 124 (sedition), 153-A (promoting enmity between different communities) and 153-B (assertions prejudicial to national integrity).
The FIR said Hardik had instigated his community to adopt violent means to “wage war” against the Gujarat government. It relied on transcripts of various telephonic conversations and speeches made by Hardik and other members of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) wherein they allegedly instigated the Patel agitators to “wage war against the state government”.
The FIR also consists of transcripts of the alleged conversations between PAAS members and other agitators about disrupting the law-and-order situation and taking revenge for police atrocities.
It also cites Hardik’s speech where he asked the community members to “throw bomb in the state Assembly”, and a conversation where Hardik’s aide Dinesh Patel was told by an unknown person how they had eliminated a couple of policemen in Surat on August 26, after the August 25 rally in Ahmedabad.
The violence which followed the rally claimed 10 lives across Gujarat.