Lucknow: Amit Jani, the prime accused in vandalising the statue of Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, was on Saturday sent to jail on 14 days of judicial custody along with his two aides.
Chief Judicial Magistrate court Rajiv Kumar Upadhyaya has remanded Amit Jani, Qasim and Rajendra Chaudhary to judicial custody for 14 days.
They were arrested from Haryana and Lucknow on Friday night.
While Jani, president of little-known Uttar Pradesh Navnirman Sena, and Rajendra Singh were arrested by the Special Task Force(STF) of UP Police from MGF Mall in Gurgaon, Qasim Chaudhary alias Qasim Ali was arrested in Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar. Qasim, a native of Ghaziabad, was among the four men photographed damaging the statue.
Alok Srivastava, a freelance journalist and his son Arpit were also produced before District Judge A K Sharma, who has fixed August 6 as the next hearing date into the case.
Alok and Arpit were arrested with Vishal Mishra, a PR firm owner – on July 26 for organising Jani’s press conference.
The trio have already been sent to jail under judicial custody for 14 days on Friday.
A total of six people have been arrested so far in connection with beheading of the statue of Mayawati.
Qasim, a MBA student in Lucknow, told mediapersons here that he came in touch with Jani just one month back through social site Facebook.
He also said most of the youths involved in the incident were connected with each other through Facebook.
However, the accused confidently said he was not guilty and their act was the general feeling ofall youths of the state.
The statue was damaged on Thursday afternoon, minutes after Jani addressed a press conference demanding that the state government remove the statues of Mayawati, as the Samajwadi Party had promised before the Assembly elections, otherwise his organisation would destroy these after 72 hours.
While Jani belongs to Meerut, Rajendra Singh is a resident of Khamini village in Mathura district. (UNI)
