Assam Police arrested Congress leader Pawan Khera on Thursday in a controversial way. He was taken off an IndiGo flight to Raipur by police from Delhi and held there until their colleagues from the northeastern state arrived to arrest him for allegedly making bad comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Khera was going to the capital of Chhattisgarh for a Congress meeting. Within hours, the Congress and Khera went to the Supreme Court, where chief justice DY Chandrachud gave him temporary bail and kept him from being arrested until Tuesday. On Monday, the court will hear Khera’s request to combine the three FIRs against him, one in Assam and two in Uttar Pradesh. A Delhi court let Khera go free after that, but he had to pay a 30,000 bond.
Why did the Assam Police pick up Pawan Khera?
At a press conference on February 17 in Mumbai, Khera said that the prime minister’s name was “Narendra Gautamdas Modi.” He seemed to change his mind after talking to someone else.
Hindenburg Research, a short-seller in the United States, has made claims about the Adani Group. The Congress has asked for a parliamentary investigation into these claims.
BJP leaders were angry about the remark because they thought it was an insult to Modi. Himanta Biswa Sarma, the leader of Assam, called Khera a “courtier” and said that his comments showed that the Congress was “full of entitlement and disdain.”
“India will never forget or forgive what these Congressmen said.
Today, Randeep Surjewala, a spokesman for the Congress, asked if the Assam leader, on whose orders police said they were acting when they arrested Khera, is “God.”
What happened on flight 6E-204 from IndiGo to Raipur?
Khera was asked to get off the plane just before it left to take him and some of his colleagues, like Supriya Shrinate and Surjewala, to the Congress meeting in Raipur. He was told that there was “something wrong” with the airline tag on his bag. Khera said later that he didn’t have any checked bags.
After he got off the plane, angry Congress leaders held a dharna (sit-in) on the tarmac of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport to protest. Khera was told he couldn’t leave because a DCP-rank police officer was on his way to arrest him.
He told reporters that he had to wait for a few minutes before both Delhi Police and Assam Police came. Congress leaders kept protesting on the tarmac the whole time, so IndiGo had to get everyone off the plane and put them on different flights to get them where they were going.
As Khera was finally led away by Assam Police, protests on the tarmac grew, and opposition lawmakers from other parties, like Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and former Puducherry chief minister V Narayanasamy, spoke out in support of the Congress leader.
BJP Vs Cong War
The BJP, as expected, responded to the Congress’s protests by saying that they shouldn’t have the “misconception” that they are above the law.
“Everything that is done is legal. Congress leaders shouldn’t think they are above the law “Gaurav Bhatia of the BJP said this.
In the Supreme Court
The case then went to the Supreme Court, where the chief justice agreed to a quick hearing. A bench led by DY Chandrachud ruled strongly in favour of Khera and the Congress. Importantly, the chief justice also said that there had to be “some level of discourse.”
The court then said that a Delhi magistrate would have to let Khera go today and that he would have temporary bail and be safe from arrest until it heard his request to combine all FIRs.
(With input from agencies)
