Jignesh Mevani moves Gujarat High Court for quashing of FIR

Source: dnaindia.com

Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani has moved the Gujarat High Court for quashing of an FIR registered against him for sharing a video on Twitter of a student being mercilessly beaten up by a teacher and ‘wrongly’ claiming that the video belongs to RM and VM Desai Sarvajanik Vidyalaya in Valsad.

The video was shared by Mevani on May 20 and the principal of the school had filed FIR against him for defamation and for publishing statements promoting enmity and hatred against the school. The MLA had titled the video as ‘Barbarism of worst form’, tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the video, and appealed to his followers to share the video until the school and the teacher stops functioning.

During the hearing of his plea by single-judge bench of Justice SH Vohra on Tuesday, Mevani’s counsel Anand Yagnik and Utkarsh Dave contended that the FIR was filed against Mevani with “ulterior motives” and with the sole purpose of harassing him.

Yagnik contended that the WhatsApp message which was uploaded by Mevani on twitter was not created by him and through the tweet, he had posed a question to the PM to inquire into the same. Justifying the same, the advocate said the tweet mentions “This is the message I received @PMO India tell us What is this?”

It was also argued that within an hour of posting the video, Mevani raised further questions on its genuineness by tweeting: “Is this video of Valsad Gujarat or Egypt? People have different versions. Can anyone tell us? This is most shocking and painful. People are sharing this video like crazy.”

Yagnik also pointed out that on the next day, Mevani clarified on Twitter that the video belonged to a school in Syria. However, the Valsad school’s principal registered an FIR on June 13. Mevani’s counsel pointed out that the principal while registering the FIR suppressed several facts. Also, it was argued that the said video was in circulation since 2017 and the complainant had earlier given several written complaints, but no FIR was registered. Court adjourned the hearing.