Image Courtesy: thehindu.com
Social activist and teacher Robin Verma who was arrested by the Lucknow police on the evening of December 20, 2019 amid ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was granted bail by a district court on Tuesday, January 7, 2020, his lawyer Kamlesh Singh told The Hindu. He also said that Verma would have to submit a bond of Rs. 50,000 to the court.
Verma was picked up from a restaurant in Hazratganj with a journalist from The Hindu and was brutally beaten up during his detention. The police have submitted a contrary account in court saying that Verma was arrested on December 21, 2019 from near the High Court road.
In court, he had stated that he was only a part of the peaceful protest and not part of the “criminal violence” that had taken place.
Singh had argued against the “illegal manner of his arrest” and said that Robin was not named in the FIR lodged at the Hazratganj police station. Singh also mentioned that the police was not able to prove that Verma was involved in the violence that took place on December 19, 2019 in Lucknow.
Robin, who also works for Rihai Manch, was suspended from Shia PG College where he was a faculty for International Business in the Bachelors of Business Administration programme after he was arrested during the anti-CAA NRC protests.
Verma was booked under Sections 147 & 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 152 (assaulting or obstructing public servant suppressing riots), 307 (attempt to murder), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and 120B (criminal conspiracy) among other serious charges. The court granted him bail without going into the merits of the case, but it can be deduced that even if the court had, prima facie, found merits on such serious grounds, they would’ve taken into consideration the State’s arguments against him and probably not granted him bail.
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