The Gujarat Police on Wednesday detained around 60 people during a demonstration in Ahmedabad, where protestors were demanding a draft law against mob lynchings across the country. Several others were detained in Delhi.
Among those taken into custody were columnist Tehseen Poonawalla, social activist and lawyer Jignesh Mevani and the former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar.
Mevani’s lawyer Shamshad Pathan said the group were anticipating the move as the police had denied their request for permission to conduct the rally. No charges have been framed against them yet, Pathan told Scroll.in.
There were more than a thousand people at the demonstration, which had begun in Mehsana and continued towards Ahmedabad. Attempts to contact police officers in Ahmedabad proved futile.
Campaign for Masuka
The National Campaign Against Mob Lynching, which was founded in June by youth political leaders and activists Poonawalla, Kumar, Shehla Rashid and others, had presented a draft law named Masuka – an acronym for Manav Suraksha Kanoon – on July 7.
“Youth detained before Masuka pledge in Delhi and before Azadi Kooch in Ahmedabad,” JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid said on Twitter. “Pledge will now take place inside the Parliament Street thana.”
The demonstrators were observing the first anniversary of the Una attacks, where seven members of a Dalit family were beaten up by a group of cow vigilantes for skinning a dead cow in the town in Gujarat.
The Masuka draft law calls for mob lynching to be made a non-bailable offence with a time-bound trial and life imprisonment for those convicted. If the police fail to control the situation, officers must be suspended immediately and a judicial or magisterial inquiry must be instituted, the draft says.
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