Protest at AI summit: court sends four Youth Congress workers to five-day police custody

A Delhi court on Saturday allowed five days of police custody of four Indian Youth Congress (IYC) workers who were arrested for staging a “shirts-off” protest at the AI Impact Summit venue here over the India-U.S. trade deal.

Judicial Magistrate Ravi of Patiala House Court sent Krishna Hari, national secretary of the Youth Congress from Bihar; Kundan Yadav, IYC state secretary, Bihar; Ajay Kumar, IYC state president, Uttar Pradesh; and Narasimha Yadav from Telangana, to the police custody for interrogation.

In its plea seeking custody of the accused, the police argued that they had raised anti-national slogans and had worn T-shirts with objectionable images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the event venue.

Stating that the act was a ‘serious’ misconduct, as an attempt had been made to stop the police in which which three personnel had been injured, the police further claimed that the custody of the accused was needed to recover their mobile phones. The police also claimed that the aim of the custodial interrogation was to find out the ‘conspiracy’ behind the protest, the source of funding and place where the T-shirts worn by the accused were printed at.

The counsel appearing for the IYC workers objected to the custody request by the police. He argued that the arrested youths were associated with a political party and had exercised their democratic right to protest peacefully. He added that the arrest of protesters had ‘greatly diminished the dignity of democracy’.