Bharadwaj remanded to one-day judicial custody over claim of assaulting minor protestor’s father

New Delhi: Self-styled influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj, who claimed in a viral video to have physically assaulted the father of a minor student protestor during a Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-led demonstration at Jantar Mantar, was sent to one-day judicial custody on Sunday after being produced before a court via video conferencing.

Delhi Police had earlier secured a one-day police custody of the accused after arresting him from Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district on Friday. Bharadwaj’s counsel, Umesh Sharma, alleged that the police had “acted completely outside standard legal procedures” by producing him before a designated SC/ST court through video link instead of the jurisdictional magistrate within 24 hours of arrest, as required under law.

“The established law requires that whenever someone is arrested, they must be produced before the jurisdictional area magistrate within 24 hours. Yesterday, we waited outside the courtroom of the jurisdictional magistrate. Upon discovering that the presiding judge was on leave, we approached the designated link magistrate. However, the police circumvented this by producing him via video conferencing before an entirely different designated SC/ST court and secured a one-day police remand,” Sharma told reporters before the hearing.

The police had earlier assured that Bharadwaj would be arrested under sections of the POCSO Act, the SC/ST Act and for attempt to murder within 72 hours, following an agitation by the CJP outside the Parliament Street Police Station in New Delhi on Friday. The protest was joined by Azad Samaj Party chief and MP Chandra Shekhar, Purnea MP Pappu Yadav and the Indian Youth Congress, who demanded registration of an FIR against Bharadwaj under stringent provisions and his immediate arrest.

The controversy erupted after Bharadwaj, in a purported viral video, allegedly claimed to have “cracked the skull” of the father of the minor, Nishu Azad, during the Jantar Mantar demonstration and boasted that he was let off by the Delhi Police as he had “political connections”.

Union Minister and LJP-RV chief Chirag Paswan on Friday said his name had been “misused” by the accused in the video, adding that he had lodged an official complaint against Bharadwaj and would ensure justice to the minor victim and her family.

(Inputs from IANS)