New Delhi: A Delhi court on Saturday remanded four Youth Congress workers to five days’ police custody for staging a shirtless protest at Bharat Mandapam during the India AI Impact Summit.
The arrested IYC workers —Krishna Hari, national secretary of the IYC from Bihar; Kundan Yadav, IYC state secretary from Bihar; Ajay Kumar, IYC state president from Uttar Pradesh; and Narasimha Yadav from Telangana— were produced before Judicial Magistrate Ravi earlier in the day.
Delhi Police sought the remand alleging the accused orchestrated a Nepal-inspired protest to defame India internationally, with anti-national slogans against the India-US trade deal and T-shirts bearing messages targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Four people from four different locations came together and printed T-shirts.
Police added that three policemen were injured and accused’s mobile phones need to be recovered to verify whether they received funding.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the accused submitted that they were being targeted because they belong to opposition party. “They are young, they have careers, and political dissent should not be crushed like this,” he argued, adding that there is no evidence to suggest that the protest was not peaceful.
