Noida: A city court on Monday allowed two-day conditional police remand of Aditya Anand, Satyam Verma and Himanshu Thakur, who have been accused of instigating violence during the industrial workers protest of April 13. The court rejected lawyers’ arguments against the validity of the arrest as baseless.Judge Virek Aggrawal ruled that the police custody period will commence from 9 am on April 29 and continue till 6 pm on April 30. “During custody, the investigating officer (IO) will ensure that the accused undergo a medical examination at the time of taking them into police custody from the jail and at the time of their admission to the prison after police custody,” the judge ruled.
The conditions set by the court were similar to the ones it issued last week for three other accused, Aakriti Chaudhary, Manisha Chauhan and Srishti Gupta, in the April 13 violence.“The IO will not subject the accused to mental or physical harassment, and learned counsels for the accused may observe the investigation proceedings while maintaining a reasonable distance and without obstructing the investigation,” the court ruled.On an application filed by Harun Rana, counsel for the accused, the court granted permission to advocate Umesh Kumar to accompany Verma, advocate Tanveer Mohammad Ali to accompany Thakur, and advocate Manik Gupta to accompany Anand in the police custody remand proceedings. Police have alleged Anand is the main conspirator in the case. Anand’s brother, meanwhile, has cited video evidence showing him appealing for peace to contest police claims.Police filed an application seeking PCR for the accused last week, based on which the court summoned them on April 21. The ACJM court heard prosecution officers and counsels for the accused at length and, while hearing the matter on April 23, allowed time to the police to come up with the case diary.“Their role in the violent protests came to light after the recovery of the laptop of Verma, mobile phones of Thakur and Anand,” police said in the remand application. “Records related to their organisations and the material used in instigating the incident and equipment provided to the workers and the violent material prepared and distributed among the workers can be assessed. There is a full possibility of getting important evidence related to this. For the continuation of the investigation, it is very important to know the capacity of the memory chip, what material and videos are present and how they hatched the criminal conspiracy.”Defence counsels Harun Rana, Sameer Saifi and Manisha objected to the police remand, saying their clients were tortured by the police on April 18 and 19 and forced to sign blank papers. Supreme Court advocate Kabir also challenged the legality of the arrest, saying procedures were not followed by the police while taking the accused into custody. “Neither were they informed about the charges nor were they given an arrest memo,” he told the court.The court reviewed the case diary documents and said that it was clear from their perusal that the grounds for arrest were stated in the arrest memo and that they were also informed of the grounds for arrest through a separate notice, signed by the accused.“The magistrate granted remand on April 19. Therefore, the accused’s argument that they were not informed of the reason for their arrest is baseless. Regarding the remaining objections that they were tortured, it is noteworthy that the accused appeared for the first time before the learned remand magistrate on April 19, and their counsel filed a petition seeking cancellation of their remand, which was not accepted, and the remand was granted. The objection is dismissed accordingly,” the court ruled.In the case diary, police have alleged that Thakur, on learning about the protest in Noida, collected money through donations and instigated workers present in the agitation to commit violence to get their demands met.
